) 'il ■■■'■ '■■'■' 



<'■; 


■'^^ 


^U ' >, 




.1 ' ^ 






*3 " 


M 


•!' 




' , 


,,^s 


r'" ' 


'^ «' : 


<» V 


.■^.\ 





,,',1 ■■..../ ., . . ■ ■, 

'•jj'i;'.';" '■ 

;m,S':'.;v';;V ..■, n. . 
^i!'<'/1>*~ ;?•■;; i^^;'' ;•••'■, -,■ 



'r,,s}K 



r. \>}\ <' '" 














.0^ ^ 



- '^^^.# 










>^^>^;%. 















■,^>*.V:C^.> 






^^^V^:^^*.-^ 









.^^ % 




^■^.^ 












^0 o 



,-v=' 











^^' 




ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS, 



IN SOME OF ITS RELATIONS TO 



CIJLTIJRE AND SOCIETY. 



HENRY GILES, 

AUTHOR OF "LECTURES AND ESSAYS." 



BOSTON: 
TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 

M DCCC LIV. 



fC 



% 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by 

TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



STEREOTYPED AT THE 
BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

CERVANTES, 7 

DON QUIXOTE, .... 30 

THE SCARLET LETTER, . 66 

FICTION, 91 

PUBLIC OPINION, 112 

THE PHILANTHROPIC SENTIMENT, 138 

MUSIC, 157. 

THE COST OF A CULTIVATED MAN, 182 

CONVERSATION, 212 

WORDSWORTH, 239 

ROBERT BURNS, 267 

THOMAS DE QUINCEY, 300 

(5) 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 



CERVANTES. 



Shakspeare and Cebtantes lived in the same age ; 
they belonged to the same order of mind ; and that is, 
the order of sovereign genius. It is rather extraordi- 
nary that no well-authenticated portrait exists of 
either: but Cervantes did what Shakspeare neglected 
to do — he left a very distinct sketch of his person, 
which was probably intended to accompany some en- 
graving to be used as a frontispiece to one of his pub- 
lications. " Him whom you see here," he says, " with 
an aquiline visage, chestnut hair, his forehead high 
and open, with lively, animated eyes, his nose curved, 
though well proportioned — a silver beard, though not 
twenty years ago it was golden — large mustachios, a 
small mouth, but few teeth, and those so bad and ill 
assorted that they don't care to preserve harmony with 
each other — a body neither fat nor lean, neither tall 
nor short — a clear complexion, rather light than brown 
— a little stooping in the shoulders, and not very 
quick of foot, — that is the author of Galatea, of 
Don Quixote de la Mancha, and other works which 

(7) 



8 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

run through the streets as if they had lost their way, 
and perhaps mthout the name of their master.'' 

Michael Cervantes, thus delineated by himself, was 
descended from a noble but reduced family of Castile. 
He was born in Alcala de Henares in October, 1547. 
He received the ordinary education which gentlemen 
of his country and his times received. He studied for 
a while in the University of Salamanca, where it does 
not appear that he gained any distinction or waited for 
any degree. He went to Rome, in 1570, in the retinue 
of Cardinal Aguaviva. He did not remain there ; and 
in a short time after he enlisted in the Spanish division 
of the army under Don John of Austria, sent to the aid 
of Venice against the power of the Turks. He was dis- 
tinguished and wounded in the great battle of Lepan- 
to. This form of expression we use in casting our 
minds back into the relations of things as they were 
then in appearance ; but from our point of view those 
relations are reversed. We would say that the battle 
of Lepanto has now its chief distinction by the fact 
that Cervantes had a share in it, humble and subordi- 
nate as the share was. Who would not rather, now, 
have been the maimed private, Cervantes, than the 
proud captain, John of Austria ? Who makes a hero 
now of the victor of Lepanto beside the author of Don 
Quixote ? For my own part, I care as little about 
John of Austria as I do about '' John o' Groat." The 
mere word, " Lepanto," has never failed to move me 
with impassioned impulse ; for, since I first read the 
story of Don Quixote, Lepanto comes always to my 
mind associated with the heroic memory and the im- 
mortal name of delight-giving Cervantes. 



CERYANTES. 9 

On his way to Spain Cervantes was captured by 
corsairs and sold to slavery in Algiers. Miseries and 
cruelties he bore during his protracted bondage which 
only eloquence like his own could describe. His suf- 
ferings did not break his spirit. His bold plans for 
escape, the invention displayed in their contrivance, 
and the courage manifested in the attempts to execute 
them moved his tyrants to respect, even to fear, him ; 
and one of them declared that, while the lame Span- 
iard was loose, his dominions or himself were not 
secure. The family of Cervantes mortgaged their 
property ; but such was the importance in which the 
barbarians held their prisoner that the proceeds would 
not be accepted for his ransom. With the amount he 
released his brothers and staid behind himself, again 
to conspire and again to plot. His father in the mean 
time died, and his last moments were imbittered with 
the thought that his son Avas still in chains. There is 
something, I fancy, of an implied, an underlying, pa- 
thos even in the mad compassion of Don Quixote for 
the galley slaves, in which we may read impressions 
of the author's own sad experience in Algiers. There 
was a danger of its being perpetual. His sisters and 
widowed mother could raise only a hundred ducats. 
The cold and gloomy Philip II. was inaccessible or 
immovable. When, at last, a petition reached him, 
all that could be extorted from the despot for a Chris- 
tian Spaniard, a hero of Lepanto in the fangs of a 
pirate, was permission to export merchandise not pro- 
hibited to the value of ten thousand ducats, on which 
the profit amounted to about sixty dollars. At last, 
by the combined exertion of his family and the Fath- 



10 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

ers of Mercy, Cervantes was liberated, just as he was 
on board a vessel wHch was under sail for Constanti- 
nople to transport bim to everlasting thraldom, 

Cervantes, in his thirty- seventh year, married a 
lady of some small fortune and of an honorable fam- 
ily. He held occasionally inconsiderable employments 
under the government, which brought him more trouble 
than wages, and more persecution than thanks. His 
main support seems to have been derived from the re- 
muneration which he received for executing commis- 
sions and agencies for private individuals. In such 
condition w^e find him in Seville in the year 1598. 
Cervantes was now fifty- one years old, wise, indigent, 
and ill treated — nay, not in the worst sense indi- 
gent ; for, if he had want, he had honor ; and though 
neglect might wound his peace, it could not repress his 
genius. For a few years he is now lost to the re- 
search of critics and biographers. Some traditions say 
that he was in prison, and that in prison he wrote the 
first part of Don Quixote. However that may be, the 
reappearance of Cervantes in literary history and the 
publication of this first part are nearly-joined events. 
But between the publication of the first part and the 
second many years intervened. The publication of the 
second part was hastened by a circumstance of flagi- 
tious indignity. A literary miscreant, taking the as- 
sumed name of Avellenada, not content with presump- 
tuously attempting to preoccupy the public with a 
spurious second part of Don Quixote, rabidly attacked 
the first part and scurrilously insulted the author. 
The genuine second part was immediately given to the 
world, and therein, alluding to his injurer and traducer 



CERVANTES. 11 

with the dignity of true greatness, he dismisses him 
in a few quiet words that have in them more of banter 
than of anger. It is even said that Cervantes knew 
the author, and, with a magnanimity which was native 
to him, concealed the name of his cowardly foe. Yet 
such concealment was perhaps the surest revenge ; 
for, though exposure must have drawn on the felon 
the scorn of nations, he was no doubt one of those 
ingrained rascals whose blood had not heat enough for 
shame, whose forehead was too brazen for a blush, and 
to whom the honor of a scourging from Cervantes 
would have been immortality and renown. Genius 
should always be above provocation from the base ; 
but if, through infirmity, it descends to be angry, it 
should bury its weakness in oblivion. It is a double er- 
ror for a great soul, in the first instance, to be irritated 
by a mean one ; and, in the second, to exalt it to the 
hope of lasting notoriety by giving it any connection 
with a living and enduring reputation. The painter 
who put his enemy's likeness into his picture under the 
character of Judas may have done what his enemy 
most desired ; and, to have a place in a picture which 
was likely to give him continued distinction, he would 
possibly have been willing to be in it even under the 
character of the devil. 

Don Quixote, complete in the publication of the 
second part, more than fulfilled its opening promise. 
It was stamped by Christendom with that mark of 
universal approbation which is a passport to all ages. 
" It was ushered into the world," says " the duchess " 
in the story, "with the general applause of nations ; " 
and, after centuries, that applause has nothing lost. 



12 ' ILLIJSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

It is not frequent in literary history that popularity 
so sudden is followed by fame so permanent. Don 
Quixote has borne without hurt the ordeal of time ; 
and the enthusiasm which in the beginning was de- 
lighted surprise has long settled into confirmed admi- 
ration. But Cervantes was now fast nearing that 
country where earthly honor, past or posthumous, 
ceases to be of value. He recognized this with a 
devout and a cheerful mind. The shadows of the 
tomb cast no darkness on his spirit or his brow ; his 
spirit was serene and his brow was clear. As he en- 
tered the solemn precincts of the grave he did so with 
no indecent levity, but with a fine and afiecting humor 
— the humor of a noble and tender humanity, that 
out of sufiering still beams smiles, and that, to the 
la^t, will cheer rather than complain. Though not 
free in youth and soldiership from sins incident to the 
temptations of his age and his profession, Cervantes 
led, on the whole, a worthy life. On the 18th 
of April, 1616, he received extreme unction; and on 
the 23d of April, being in his sixty-ninth year, he 
died. If England and Spain had then counted time 
by the same calendar, this day would have been 
marked by the deaths of Shakspeare and Cervantes ; 
but, as the calendar used in Spain difiered from that 
of England eleven days in advance, the death of Cer- 
vantes was by that interval earlier than the death of 
Shakspeare. Cervantes died in Madrid, and was 
buried in an unnoted spot of the cemetery belonging 
to the convent of the " Trinitarians.'' Many cities at 
one time claimed the honor of his nativity ; but the 
city in which he died left his body to obscurity ; and 



CERYANTES. 13 

he who prepared entrancement for the heart, which 
cannot fail until man shall cease to laugh or weep, has 
no tomb to mark the spot where the mortal part of him 
reposes. But what boots it ? Why should we much 
regret if the sepulchral clay of such men has neither 
monument nor epitaph, while their spirits go abroad 
over earth and find everlasting welcome in living 
souls ? The secrecy that sometimes curtains the bed 
where a great one reposes guards it by mystery from 
vulgar idolatry ; and when, like the Jews seeking for 
the grave of Moses, we cannot find the silent resting- 
place, the memory, which we would have associated 
with a name engraven upon stone, comes more directly 
to our spirits and more sublimely. Disconnected in 
our thoughts from local and limited mortality, we con- 
verse with its abiding life in a free and unbounded re- 
lationship. Still, in consecrating, with solemn desig- 
nation, the space where the wrecked temples lie that 
once had shrined " celestial fire," we pay but a decent 
homage : we owe this homage to the deathless ; and, in 
doing justice to them, we do honor to ourselves. 

We now pass from the biographical aspect of our 
subject to the critical ; and as of the one we have 
had but glances, of the other we can have no more. 

We must concede to our author, in beginning, those 
general qualities which place him in the grandest 
order of creative and imaginative genius — which place 
him in the class with Homer, Shakspeare, Scott. 
Among other great endowments, we must allow him 
extraordinary capacities of invention; and, connected 
with these, we must also allow him fidelity to truth 
and nature, the results of penetrating insight and of 



14 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

exact observation. As most evident of all and most 
essential, we must allow him that constructive faculty 
which gathers diversities of intellection and emotion 
into wholeness with that passion which gives it power 
and with that idealism which gives it elevation. And 
let me dwell here on that wonderful peculiarity of mind 
which enables a man to interpret actual character with 
a faculty akin to inspiration ; which enables him to 
separate in all modifications of character the constitu- 
ents which are inherent from those that are accidental, 
the constituents which are generic from those that are 
special, and the constituents which are special from 
those that are individual. To this let us add the still 
more wonderful peculiarity, — without which, indeed, 
a man may be a man of genius, but not of creative 
genius, — the peculiarity that enables a man to com- 
bine these constituents into such forms as it shall please 
him, and which, though ideal in origin and existence, 
as the forms will be, enables him to keep them always 
true to the laws of unity and fitness, to make them 
types of unchangeable and indestructible realities. 
Genius alone can thus interpret, thus create ; because 
it is only genius that can think and work securely be- 
yond the range of the individual sphere of habit. It 
requires no extraordinary ability to express intense 
personal feeling strongly or to move those whose feel- 
ings are coincident with one's own. It is not remark- 
able that one should understand the feelings of such 
persons as sympathize with him, and that vdth. any 
moderate power of conception and any fair capacity of 
expression he should reproduce their sentiments and 
win upon their confidence. The efiects produced on 



CERVANTES. 15 

those who live and move in the same sphere of belief, 
of politics, of taste, or of prejudice, with the agent who 
produces them, are no safe measures of general power, 
and are no test in any way of genius. A man's sect, 
a man's party, a man's circle in society are but en- 
largements of himself; and his influence within any of 
these limits is only an evidence of the force with 
which he imbodies, and of the sagacity with which he 
applies, the common experience. But to go out of the 
common experience, to pass away from the individual- 
ity, and to conceive of life that was never personally 
or sympathetically known, — that had never any prac- 
tically /eZ^ connection with the interests of the being 
who imagines or who paints it, never any part in his 
individual fear or hope, his individual gladness or 
grief, — to do this, not hesitantly, but confidently, not 
with a guess or a conjecture, but with certainty, with 
a certainty which has no fear to confront the severest 
criticism of actual knowledge, — to do this requires 
genius, genius of the highest kind, the genius of a 
Shakspeare or the genius of a Cervantes. Genius can 
for the time transmigrate its personality. It can trans- 
fuse this personality into any objective condition, and, 
though holding its own freedom, it can fully appre- 
hend that condition, appropriate it, realize it, and pre- 
sent its phenomena distinctively and truly. Thus the 
great dramatic performer does not mimic or counterfeit ; 
he feels his part as the poet feels his subject. He does 
not give a feigned expression of the grief or guilt 
which he presents ; he gives it a genuine, true expres- 
sion — not indeed as an actual, but as an imaginative, 
agent. Artistically, he is for the hour the character 



16 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

which he seems. Thus, also, the great advocate is not 
the hireling which some suppose, who has emotions 
for a bribe and passions for payment. He pleads for 
his client with no false or simulated zeal. He speaks 
out of a real, and not a spurious, energy ; and it is so 
far as he does thus speak that he speaks with effect. 
What if he suspects his client's guilt; what if he 
knows it ; he knows also his love for liberty, his love 
for life ; by the force of genius he takes the client's 
place, he conceives the client's risk, and, true to the 
situation, true to the instinct, his faculties and his elo- 
quence obey the promptings of the situation and the 
instinct. He feels the danger thoroughly that is not 
his own ; he speaks out of the feeling as earnestly as if 
it were his own ; and he is as zealous in exploring all 
the methods of escape. The truth with which he 
realizes the personality of another, and at the same 
time brings his own free energy to act through the 
conception of that personality, is what constitutes his 
power; and such power is the power of genius. Shak- 
speare was in social grade of the commonalty ; but he 
needed no actual experience to understand the person- 
alities of kings. He knew what was in them. His 
genius divined their thoughts, and was accurate and 
quick to furnish these thoughts with becoming words. 
Cervantes in social grade was of the nobles; but he 
was no stranger to the feelings of a muleteer ; and he 
could tell with discerning sympathy the hidden story 
of a goatherd's breast. 

The humor of Cervantes, both in its kind and meas- 
ure, entitles him to be ranked in the same class with 
Shakspeare. Ironical or literal, delicate or broad, of 



CERVANTES. 17 

smiling insinuation or grinning drollery, no species of 
humor is wanting or defective in the genius of Cer- 
vantes. He is master of the ludicrous in all its varie- 
ties ; but, as the case is with large souls, his humor is 
cordial — always from love and joy, always generous 
and friendly. Cervantes, as I have said, has humor in 
all its varieties ; universal humor, which belongs to 
essential relations and which is akin to wit ; national 
humor, which connects itself with the history, customs, 
idioms, habits of thought and habits of life native to 
the country where it springs ; individual humor, that 
which comes out from a singular cast of imagination, 
a special training, an intense appropriation of a man's 
own experience : these all, with their wondrous diver- 
sities of forms, with their capricious eccentricities of 
spirit, may be found in the writings of Cervantes. It 
is as cosmopolitan as humor can be, and yet it is dis- 
tinctly national. It may well be doubted whether 
any writer was ever in the best sense more national 
than Cervantes ; whether any writer ever wound him- 
self more lovingly into the instincts and idioms of his 
countrymen ; whether any writer can be more exten- 
sively known than Cervantes is in his native land ; and 
whether, being known, any was ever better appreciated. 
I can think of only one ; and that is Robert Burns. 
Both have access to the people by their humor, and 
by a humor powerfully national. But, with all its 
nationality, the humor of Cervantes is unmistakably 
individual. He created a spirit and a form of humor 
of which the whole is not only his own, but much of 
it himself. Were I called on, however, to specify 
what I consider the most individual, the most distinc- 
2 



18 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

tive, peculiarity in the humor of Cervantes, I would 
say, its sweetness. Among all the quizzical contortions 
to which he subjects the genus of the ludicrous there 
is not one leer of scorn, not one wrinkle of derision, 
no sneer of sarcasm, and no air of taunt. The chalice 
of humor which he fills with his bountiful imagina- 
tion does truly overflow ; it sparkles, it foams, it ex- 
hilarates ; but, drink as deeply as one may, it does not 
imbitter, it does not inflame ; it is a spirit beverage, 
healthful and refreshing, the oil of social gladness, and 
the milk of human kindness. 

But here have I been speculating and philosophizing 
upon humor, as if such a method with such a subject 
could be ever to the purpose. Who can define humor ? 
Who can dissect it by analysis or square it to the rules 
of logic? Who can methodize the vagaries of the 
mirthful brain? Who can make mathematics out of 
merriment ? Who can postulate a pun ? Who can 
square the circle of a joke ? The calculus of cachin- 
nation would be a pleasant kind of ciphering. One 
sometimes hears of the philosophy of humor. The 
phrase is, itself, most humorous. The philosophy of 
humor would truly be the humor of philosophy. 
Ratiocination is too hard and dry a process to have 
any association with a thing so glowing and so mellow 
as humor, which is, as Corporal Trim would say, the 
radical heat and moisture of the human mind. We 
have read of Rabelais " laughing in his easy chair ; " 
but who ever heard of Aristotle laughing in any chair, 
or Thomas Aquinas, or Emanuel Kant ? Their very 
names suggest a nightmare of abstracts, concretes, 
syllogisms, enthymems, and categorical imperatives. 



CERVANTES. 19 

Conceive, if you can, the recovery of appetite by exer- 
cise in polemics, and the improvement of complexion 
by a regimen of metaphysics : suppose a man's getting 
rosy on statistics and plump on political economy. 
" Laugh and grow fat,^^ If you should grow exorbi- 
tantly fat by laughing, laughing still will keep you in 
healthy motion. It is a most admirable system of sta- 
tionary gymnastics. Humor, I repeat, puzzles logic. 
Who can give a reason for the folly that is in him } 
But could logic be applied to humor, and dare I de- 
scribe the syllogism that would suit it, here is my de- 
scription : Its major should be good temper, its minor 
a good fancy, its middle term a good heart, and its 
conclusion a good laugh. 

But in that which marks the supreme exertion of 
imaginative genius, the creation of character, all criti- 
cism, without hesitation and without division, awards 
to Cervantes his place with the greatest. And well it 
may. But what is it, let us ask, to create a character ? 
It is to introduce into men's fancies a character new to 
them. The first demand of the mind on the imagina- 
tive writer is novelty. The being introduced must be 
a new acquaintance, a recognized addition to the ideal 
population already in existence. And this must not 
be merely numerical ; the new inhabitant must be a 
distinct individual ; he must be himself, and not an- 
other ; different from each, different from all ; no copy, 
no imitation, no counterfeit. But this difference must 
not be artificial or in a mere mannerism; much less 
must it be exceptional and a monstrosity. It must be 
natural, founded in the reality of character, and accord- 
ant with the general laws of reason and experience. 



20 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

Strange the new character may be, odd, eccentric ; but 
he is always amenable to these laws ; and we must find 
in his being the principles which form the basis of all spir- 
itual existence. He must be included, therefore, with- 
in the circle of our understanding and our sympathies. 
He must, in fact, be congenial to us. He must not be 
out of humanity nor against it ; for in the one case we 
could not know him, and in the other we would repel 
him. But art deals only with the apprehensible ; so, 
likewise, it should deal mainly with the agreeable ; 
and if the revolting has any place in art, it must be one 
as subordinate as possible, since whatever should cause 
disgust or pain to predominate would be fatal to all 
the real purposes of art. In the degree, therefore, 
that a character occupies our attention, he must move 
our admiration or win our liking ; for, on the whole, 
we can bear to remain long only with the noble, the 
grand, the good, or the amusing. Some of these, or all, 
form the very reason of his existence. If he is not 
any of them, there is no reason for his being ; if he is 
the contrary of them, there is a sufficient reason to put 
him out of being by giving him to oblivion. Thus 
briefly we see what it is, not only to create a charac- 
ter, but what it is to create a character that mil live, 
a character that deserves to live. These hasty obser- 
vations might be extended to a deliberate essay, and, 
if adequately illustrated, to a volume. The import of 
them could be sustained, I think, in every original 
character in the literature of imagination from Hector 
to Hamlet, from the surly and snarling old Charon to 
the sage and smiling Mr. Pickwick. But all the ex- 
emplification that can be desired, Cervantes himself 



CEKVANTES. 21 

most amply supplies. To create a character, a charac- 
ter that will live, that deserves to live, implies, as I 
have tried to show, one that has novelty, individuality, 
naturalness, and is of interest to us. Who has done 
this with greater success than Cervantes ? and not in 
one character, but in many. Many, I say ; for though 
two of his characters stand ever the most present to 
the mind, there is a multitude behind them ; not in 
Don Quixote alone, but the numerous other writings 
of Cervantes. But in these two only, the knight and 
the squire, the qualities that I have spoken of shine 
with the most luminous distinctness. The novelty of 
both separately, and also in combined and contrasted 
originality, stands clearly out from all that had been 
and from all that is in the world of mind. Imitation 
has only served to prove that they are inimitable. 
Startling and unapproachable inventiveness, however, 
as they evince, singular and incomparable as is their 
individuality, they are yet the most congenial, the 
most social, the most companionable of creations. 
They are instinct with reality ; and we could not de- 
stroy them if we would. They are so natural that 
they seem now immortal parts of nature. Wonderful 
indeed is genius — most simple, yet most inscrutable, 
are these illusions, in which as it pleases it involves 
us. A world it gives us which is not of the senses, 
and that world has its ages, its regions, its rulers, and 
its peoples ; a world it is most genuine to us, though 
it is not the scene of our labors, but of our dreams ; a 
world which we cannot afford to lose without losing 
the infinite ideal that is imbosomed in our life. In 
this world, amidst throngs of others, the knight and 



22 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

squire of Cervantes still go on tlieir way, still seek- 
ing for adventure — the knight lean and loyal, lance 
in hand, fearless of the universe ; and the squire jovial 
and plump, patient as his donkey, and as longing for 
good suppers. They cannot be annihilated : all they 
do and all they suffer are elements of reality, are true 
entities, inasmuch as they are agencies in emotion, 
and add, by thought, to the great aggregate of being. 
Nay, more : we feel that this knight and squire do 
and suffer consistently, according to their nature, 
which, as they do and suffer through us, is accord- 
ing to ours. We cannot but sympathize with them ; 
they excite our interest, and they permanently hold it. 
The great moral qualities of high genius are bril- 
liantly apparent in the writings of Cervantes, and es- 
pecially in his iromortal romance. We discern always 
in it a pure, tolerant, and philanthropic wisdom ; and 
the character of the author, we have evidence to assert, 
was the character of the man. Calmness, tolerance, 
and philanthropy, rare qualities in any age, were al- 
most miraculous in that of Cervantes. It was an age 
of passion and conflict in both the outward life of man 
and the inward. The new world still drew myriads to 
its shores ; but the original impulse had ceased and 
given way to baser promptings. The charm of mys- 
tery was broken ; dreams of enthusiasm were over ; 
lust of gain trod down the love of enterprise, and ad- 
venture degenerated into rapine. It was an age when 
dominion was sought for, acquired, held without prin- 
ciple — when it was exercised without equity or mer- 
cy — in the strife for which the fortunes of the tyrants 
might be doubtful, but where the oppressions of the 



CERVANTES. 23 

people were certain. The native country of Cervantes 
stood out foremost in the age — foremost in its pas- 
sions, and with no imbecile desire. Spain was covet- 
ous of empire ; and she had it : a great part of Europe 
was hers, comprising some of its most fruitful and 
most lovely regions. Her standard waved also on the 
shores of India ; and she ruled America from the Gulf 
of Mexico to Cape Horn. Spain coveted wealth ; and 
she had it : gold and silver from the west, gems and 
spices from the east ; at her own doors, horses, herds, 
and flocks, corn, wine, and oil — a land glorious to 
look on, and a people in many ways as glorious as 
their land. Spain coveted renown ; and she had it: 
her warriors by sea and land made her illustrious ; 
and her voyagers were among the boldest and bravest 
of discoverers. Her armies, it is true, were driven out 
of Holland, and her Armada was shattered by the 
elements and by England ; but Spain remained, not- 
withstanding, a grand and potent state among the 
empires of Christendom. 

Not by outward objects alone were passions fiercely 
excited. Conscience and ideas lit them up with in- 
tenser fire. The year before Cervantes was born Lu- 
ther died. This event indicates the course and char- 
acter of the time. Mighty energies were at work ; 
new thoughts found new words. Whenever man is in 
earnest, words are things ; and in this case men were 
in earnest and words were things. Wherever the new 
words were accepted old things passed away. The 
storm which Luther evoked was rushing over his quiet 
grave ; and, while his clay reposed, his strong spirit 
seemed alive in the mighty sound. The voice which 



24 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

raised this storm came out from tlie cloister ; out from 
tlie camp there came another voice to resist it. The 
conversion of Ignatius Loyola, the countryman of 
Cervantes, from the pleasures of the world to a zeal 
for heaven occurred a few years before the birth of our 
author. Before Cervantes was in manhood, the order 
of the Jesuits had become a wonder among men. The 
conservative spirit of the converted soldier was hold- 
ing obstinate encounter with the revolutionary spirit 
of the innovating monk. Yet this encounter was but 
a portion of its work. Wonderful indeed was the or- 
der of the Jesuits. Ubiquitous in presence, it stood by 
the thrones of kings ; it entered into their secret cham- 
bers ; it lectured in colleges ; it taught in schools ; it 
sat by the bed of the noble and the beggar ; it con- 
versed with the American Indian in his hut. From 
Delhi to Pekin, and from the Canadas to Peru, you 
may find its track where missionary had never left a 
print before. Briarean in skill, it had hands for a 
hundred arts — to forge a cannon or to make a pin — 
to raise a tent or to build a temple — ready to paint 
the likeness of a Chinese monarch's stupid face or to 
take the measure of the stars. More than Protean in 
variety of adaptation, there was no nation or class to 
whose manners it could not conform and with whose 
speech it was not familiar. It wore the vesture of Bra- 
min. Bonze, and Mandarin with the grace of native 
habit, and it spoke their formidable dialects with the 
ease of native instinct. Invincible of spirit as it was 
universal in genius, it had courage to dare and it had 
ability to direct. "When it failed, it had strength still 
in reserve to sustain it in endurance and to crown it 



CERVANTES. 25 

with the victory of martyr death. This order was pe- 
culiarly connected with Spain ; from Spain it had its 
origin ; and Spaniards were its earliest and its greatest 
men. 

Spain, therefore, was a mighty element in the out- 
ward and inward agencies of the time, though causes 
were already at work which were hastening her down- 
fall. She was great amidst the nations of the age ; and 
she was as distinguished by her crimes as by her power. 
It was every where an age of combat and bigotry — 
an age that joined the wiles of craft to the ferocities 
of passion — an age that allowed rights only to the 
strong, and in which wars were as savage as they were 
frequent. Spain went with the rest of Europe in the 
worst propensities of the time. Now, it was in such 
an era, when men were destroying each other with a 
fury of national animosities that resembled the hatred 
of demons, when they were burning and breaking 
each other for opinions, that Cervantes gave his 
gracious lessons of kindness and good will ; that he 
united practical sagacity with elevated thought ; that 
he leagued both in the covenant of charity ; that 
he joined wit to wisdom in graceful and consenting 
marriage ; and that, not impairing instruction, but 
relieving it by exciting mirth, he cheered the spirit 
while he made it grave. 

Only one element more in the genius of Cervantes 
will I note ; and this is equally a characteristic of the 
man as of the writer : I mean heroism. His life 
was a heroism ; and if that saying of Milton is true, 
that " he who would write an heroic poem must him- 
self live one," Cervantes was entitled to write an heroic 



26 ILLUSTBATIONS OF GENIUS. 

romance ; for verily he lived one. Beneath all the 
qualities of a misdirected mind in the leading character 
of his great romance there are the qualities also of a 
generous, a brave, and a pure heart. These are all 
heroic qualities. Courage is heroic ; rectitude is he- 
roic, and thus, above all, is a grand and disinterested 
object. Combine these several attributes in a single 
character, raise it above the selfish maxims "of the 
world, give it imagination and enthusiasm ; you have 
then, in essence, an heroic man. It is true that, if he 
cannot perceive the true relations of things, and will, 
in his blindness, act in contradiction to them, his hero- 
ism may even become mischievous. But that noble 
nature which the author represents in his knight as 
acting through a disordered fancy we find realized, 
sanely and wisely, in himself through the course of a 
manly life. Observe that courage in him which will 
not, even in fever, stay from the place of danger. " It 
is fit," said he, at the battle of Lepanto, when his 
captain and his doctor would have restrained him in 
his berth because of severe illness, — "it is fit that I 
should be where my countrymen are ; and it is better 
that I should die in battle than that I should die in bed." 
And that hilarity which belongs to the real hero, 
and which, being the health of the soul, outlives the 
health of the body, — how richly that hilarity was his ! 
It sustained him through his labors — labors fruit- 
ful in numerous works, to which I have not had time 
even to allude, that were the fitting kindred of Don 
Quixote, though lost in its greater splendor — tales 
that have the delicate graces of Boccaccio without his 
defilements — dramas also, one of which, Numantia, 



CERVANTES. 27 

founded on the history of the siege of that place by 
the Romans, is so pervaded by a terrible and tragic 
majesty that Sismondi calls Cervantes the Castilian 
^schylus. The amount of labor which Cervantes 
accomplished is concealed, by the grandeur of his last 
achievement ; and in this Cervantes resembles Milton. 
Neither of them, indeed, had walked to his triumph 
unnoted ; both of them had all along the way left their 
signal towers in the world ; but hoih, in quitting the 
world, marked their departure from it by monuments 
of glory that overlie with the shadow of their massive 
height the structures which they had erected on their 
course behind. But his hilarity sustained him in suf- 
fering as well as in toil. It bore him gallantly over 
the waves of adversity — nerved him against the 
breakers that dashed him ever from the shores of court 
favor when court favor was an author's life. It ena- 
bled him to laugh at, and not to curse, the wrong that 
would have robbed him of the fame which was all that 
he had from the labor and the sweat of his genius ; 
and to the last it did not desert him. As he rode on 
his mule to Esquivias, borne down with despair, he 
fell into company with two students, who spoke of his 
name but did not know his person. He conversed 
with them jocularly and pleasantly, left them to go 
laughing on their way, dismounted at his door to be 
carried, in not many days, out through that door to 
his grave. The whole history of Cervantes in captivi- 
ty is one of disinterestedness, valor, honor, and truth. 
He would expose his own life to shelter the lives of 
his friends ; he would take the whole blame upon him- 
self of efforts to escape ; he would declare that no tor- 



28 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

ture should compel him to confess ; and by his chival- 
rous boldness he would surprise the Turks themselves 
into generosity. When his funds were scanty, he 
helped to redeem those who were less important than 
himself; and when he could not help to redeem he 
helped to feed them. But, though he would not con- 
fess, neither would he prevaricate. When he spoke 
he told the truth ; he told it faithfully, he told it 
fearlessly ; and when a hair seemed to threaten his 
existence, he would not turn it aside even by the 
whisper of a lie. 

There is much, therefore, in the character of Don 
Quixote which I take to be an image of that of Cer- 
vantes ; and the image is not ignoble. Don Quixote 
is valor crazed in armor. He is the spirit that fought 
at Lepanto gone among selfish men astray. In all 
moral and social graces of the soul he is a being full 
of worth and dignity. His honor admits not of sus- 
picion ; his probity is above even the imagination of 
impeachment. He cares not for power except to do 
good, and for fame only as it illumines virtue. I sus- 
pect that even the follies of Don Quixote had their 
counterparts in the character of the author ; I suspect 
that he was no better manager than the knight, and 
that he was not far from being the same kind of reader. 
I place him before my thought with his grave face 
and his pensive eye, bent in rapt attention over the 
pages of Amadis de Gaul. I watch him under an 
orange tree, at the decline of the sun, arise from Don 
Belianus of Greece, that has served as a pillow for his 
siesta. He, as well as the knight, had his struggles 
with rude men ; and he, as well as the knight, was, 



CERVANTES. 29 

we may be sure, often esteemed a fool. ne knight 
struck his windmill giant bravely, and wondered, of 
course, that he, and not the windmill giant, was flat 
upon the earth. But Cervantes, we can conceive, had 
often to attempt feats quite as appalling and as satis- 
factorily disastrous ; as, for instance, to make three 
ducats do the work of five, or to exchange the golden 
treasures of his brain for even the copper treasures of 
the bank. Again I repeat that, when we interpret the 
character of Cervantes by his genius, and seek the 
direction of his genius in his character, we do no in- 
justice to either ; and when in his knight we look for 
both, to both we then do honor. His knight is a gen- 
tleman in the finest sense of that fine word ; he is a 
scholar that has filled his mind with much learning 
and many thoughts ; he has drawn not a little from 
books, more from man and nature ; but in the written 
pages, in the living earth, and in the silent stars he 
has not missed the spiritual and the eternal — he has 
not failed of God. His knight is that without being 
which a gentleman is but a shape and a scholar but 
a sound : he is an honest and a good man — that 
which gives to the form of courtesy the life of charity 
— that which adorns philosophy with the grace of 
modesty — that which beautifies knowledge with the 
sanctity of truth. What shall we say more ? Only 
this : in Don Quixote they are the idea and the shad- 
ow ; in Cervantes they are the reality and the sub- 
stance. 



DON QUIXOTE. 

The spirit of humor changes never ; but its form does 
constantly. For though humor has a relation to the 
primal faculties of human nature as near and as direct as 
pathos, it is more variable and more temporary in its 
methods of combination and expression. Man is as 
permanently a creature of laughter as he is of tears; 
but as the sources of his tears are more deeply seated 
in his nature than the sensibilities of laughter, the 
agencies that reach the fountains of weeping are at 
once more simple and more intense, therefore more 
uniform and more enduring, than those which move 
the spirit, or rather, perhaps, the nerves, of mirth- 
fulness. These profound sentiments of our being, 
which bind it to its most solemn interests, and out of 
which arise its seriousness and its griefs, are not so 
related to passing incidents and manners as are the 
associations by which merriment is excited. The 
sound of a word, the allusion to a name, the turn of 
a phrase, the implication of a supposedly understood 
meaning may be a medium for the soul of humor ; 
and the impression, where the medium is truly vital, 
is instantaneous and irresistible : for the same reason, 
it is often local, limited, and transient. The power 
that reaches into grave emotion, the power that reaches 

(30) 



DON QUIXOTE. 31 

the consciousness, which rational and immortal man 
carries out of each hour and out of each scene, acts on 
all within him that is immortal, clings to the identity 
of the individual, and is in the compass of the univer- 
sality of the race. The serious and the tragic do not 
depend upon the word, but on the spirit ; not on the 
mode, but on the import. Tragedy remains young 
when comedy has grown haggard ; and tragedy is a 
living voice when comedy has been long dead, even as 
a sounding echo. When we read Cicero's treatise 
upon oratory, nothing is more easy of comprehension 
to us than the examples he gives us of ancient elo- 
quence — nothing is more unintelligible to us than his 
illustrations of ancient joking. All that is epic and 
ethical we can feel from Homer and Plato to Shak- 
speare and Bacon ; but though all the humorists along 
the same line had survived we could but little under- 
stand them, and of all writers they would be the hard- 
est texts for critical antiquarians. We have a humor 
for each district not felt out of it, in each generation 
that dies with it ; and humor, as I have said, so de- 
pends on the quickness of immediate association for its 
effect, that, even when of the highest order, time and 
distance are all but deadly to its force and freshness. 
Don Quixote, considered as a story of humor, must, 
so far as it is such, be subject to these limitations ; 
but the comic in Don Quixote is so elevated by the 
serious, and the serious is so enlivened by the comic, 
that it cannot but live, and it cannot but be felt within 
the sphere of literature, while humanity continues the 
mixture that it is — of laughter and of tears. 

Certain books, a person of mature years takes for 



32 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

granted, every individual of any reading knows. Don 
Quixote is one of these books. To consider a person 
out of the pale of common culture for not having read 
Don Quixote would be judgment rather rash, since there 
are some who have not read Shakspeare ; since even 
great men have been known that quoted Shakspeare for 
the Bible. But it is no reckless matter to assume that 
most persons of ordinary education understand the 
main purport of Don Quixote. The story, as they are 
aware, was written early in the seventeenth century, 
and in Spain, in which there was then, as there is still, 
more of the stationary and the old than in any other 
country in Europe. The middle ages lay then with 
more of their dim ideas over Spain than they did 
over other countries ; though even over most countries 
in Europe they still hung with a heavy and illusive 
twilight. The ideas of chivalry had not yet passed 
away ; in reality, they were vital, even in practical 
England, in the adventurous action of Sir Walter 
Raleigh and in the romantic sentiment of Sir Philip 
Sidney. But in Spain they were passionate in the 
popular imagination ; and they were kept alive in the ut- 
most absurdity and distortion by the wildest romances. 
It was to ridicule these romances that Cervantes 
wrote Don Quixote. He conceives of a man who 
gets the images of such stories into his head and pon- 
ders over them until they seem realities. This man 
takes the world to be a field for chivalry ; every thing 
in the world assumes a form to his fancy that answers 
to a chivalric illusion. He supposes nothing so much 
wanted among men as a knight errant ; and, imagining 
that he is in all points qualified, he prepares to go out 



J)ON QUIXOTE. 33 

into the world that he dreams is but waiting for his 
exertions to glorify and to regenerate it. He wants a 
squire, and prevails on a clownish peasant to assume 
that character. He must have a mistress, and places 
before his mind in that relation a country wench 
whom he might have seen in his rambles. He calls 
her by a romantic name, and dresses her out in all 
brilliant qualities. He accoutres himself and mounts 
himself for the mission, and sets out to battle with the 
vulgar, actual, hard, material world in the sincerity 
of his intense and enthusiastic illusion. The first 
mistake he makes is that of taking a windmill for a 
giant, and in the attack getting sorely bruised. His 
mistakes with men are not less palpable nor more 
pleasant. And, throughout, the contact of his illusion 
with actuality is much of the same character. The 
series of mishaps and their consequences thus arising 
those who have read the story know ; they know, also, 
the quantity of beauty and pathos that mingles with 
it ; they know, too, the goodness and the wisdom of 
the knight except in the aspect of his insanity. With 
the details I deal not ; my concern is only with the 
soul and import of the whole. Only to 01*3 incident 
towards the close I would allude, because it is the 
purport of some extended comment ; and that is, the 
one wherein the knight and the squire fall in with a 
duke and duchess. These great persons of quality 
follow the example of the vulgar ; they humor the 
knight's madness, cajole the squire's folly, make both 
believe in the reality of their relations, and under this 
deception enjoy a groundling fun, and sustain by wicked 
tricks a vile and inhuman amusement. 
3 



34 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

In attempting to speak on the general scope and 
spirit of tlie romance, Don Quixote, I pretend to no 
analytic or comprehensive criticism. Criticism of Don 
Quixote would, indeed, be a bold presumption or a 
useless task. The generations of civilized men for 
more than two centuries, the vulgar and the learned, 
have with one consent allowed it the supremacy in 
prose fiction. There is no critic, however national, 
who thinks of placing any story of his own country, 
however popular, above the story of the immortal 
Spaniard. Don Quixote bears the same relation to 
prose fiction that the Iliad does to epic poetry ; and 
even should a finer romance come into existence, 
it will preserve this relation by virtue of priority, origi- 
nality, and traditional association. Persons may be 
who cannot enjoy this wonderful creation ; nor would 
I on that account impugn their taste. If mere enjoy- 
ment gave a writer his place in fame, take the evi- 
dence of Dr. Johnson as to the number who enjoy 
Milton, and Milton's place in Fame's temple must be 
low indeed. Yet, upon the score of mere enjoyment, 
if the votes could be collected of the millions who in 
youth and age have luxuriated in Don Quixote, Cer- 
vantes would be crowned among the kings of story 
with acclamations of enthusiasm. It is not, however, 
for mere pleasure that I have been drawn to seek in 
this work matter for reflection. I have been dra^vn to 
it by its pregnant seriousness, by its varied philoso-' 
phy of human character and human life. My aim is 
to be suggestive rather than logical, and not so much 
to excite laughter as to quicken thought. 

The leading purpose of the author is evident from 



DON QUIXOTE. 35 

the beginning, and it is not left out of view for a mo- 
ment to the end. It was plainly the intention of Cer- 
vantes to write a burlesque on books of chivalry, but 
not by any means to ridicule chivalry itself ; to laugh 
aloud and make others laugh at compilations of in- 
sanity and folly ; not in the least to pour derision on 
generous dreams, on pure idealism, on noble designs, 
on fervid imagination, or on lofty enthusiasm. Un- 
questionably the author's original idea was that of a 
burlesque, and probably at first it was nothing more. 
But a commanding spirit such as he could never have 
confined himself within limits so contracted ; never 
could he have compressed his abundant fancy, his pen- 
etrating intellect, his mature learning, his earnest sym- 
pathies, his acute and accurate observation within the 
circle of an epic lampoon. To genius, purpose is sel- 
dom more than an occasion. The purpose may be 
humble, but that purpose may be the occasion to a 
grand creation. Genius cannot, like talent, anticipate 
its end, and so deliberately adhere to a fixed adapta- 
tion of constructive means. Thus it is especially in 
works of imagination. In these the life of genius 
does not enter into previously devised forms. The 
life and the form grow together by a development in 
which the organization and the spirit are contempo- 
raneous and inseparable. Genius, therefore, often re- 
verses the originating intention, and always goes be- 
yond it. Thus Cowper intended simply to write a 
trifle for a lady, and produced the greatest work of his 
life — the Task. Fielding intended to make fun of 
Richardson ; but, in writing Joseph Andrews, he created 
Parson Adams. Nay, in mere sentiment, without 



36 ILLUSTitATIOxNS OF GENIUS. 

any design to be humorous, but seriously and in his 
own person, he has passages as mawkish as the worst 
of Richardson's. Cervantes, on setting out, may only 
have proposed to laugh absurd romances out of ex- 
istence ; but the laugh was soon combined with noble 
harmonies, and constantly it was lost in them. Be- 
neath the laugh there was inspiration finer than Mo- 
mus gives : the satirist was a poet, and ridicule was 
changed into song. 

Still, we must confess, the plan is a parody ; it is a 
parody upon the fictions which constituted the amusing 
reading of the age. In order to show its absurdity, 
the author translates a positive character of the age 
into a romantic character of its reading. He takes 
then for his hero a gentleman of small fortune, but of 
good education. His means are not opulent, but they 
are sufiicient. His housekeeper and niece manage his 
worldly concerns, and then he is at leisure and liberty. 
This leisure and liberty he devotes to the unremitting 
perusal of romances of chivalry. His mind is dislo- 
cated. He loses sight of his personality and his age. 
He is often incoherent and often confused. At one 
instant his desire appears to be to restore the age of 
chivalry ; at another time he seems to think that he is 
living in it ; but that he is living in it is the most per- 
manent feeling of his life. He determines to become 
a knight errant. Love was the religion of chivalry ; 
and, next to heaven, woman was the adoration of 
knighthood. A knight not in love would have been 
as a soldier wanting courage ; a knight having no 
mistress would have been as a soldier without a sword. 
The hero accordingly puts himself in love by force of 



DON QUIXOTE. 37 

imagination ; and in Dulcinea he finds an object as im- 
aginary as his passion. A squire is as essential to a 
knight as a mistress. The raw material for a squire is 
a rude peasant, half cunning and half foolish, who, by 
contact with his master, is afterwards shaped into 
the immortal Sancho. Accoutred in rusty armor, 
mounted upon bareboned Rosinante, accompanied by 
Sancho astride of Dapple, — a donkey as renowned as 
the squire that rode him, — Don Quixote sallies forth in 
search of adventures. We have then presented to us 
a conflict between crazy enthusiasm and commonplace 
routine — between the ideal fancies of the bewildered 
hero and the ordinary events of the actual world. Out 
of this conflict the adventures naturally arise ; and, 
carrying it on to the end, the author evolves a suc- 
cession of incidents, which, for interest and variety, 
has nothing equal to it in the whole compass of prose 
fiction. 

The incidents of the story are not only wonderful, 
therefore, in their variety, but wonderful in the means 
by which they are created. Without leaving the com- 
mon earth or common events, Cervantes excites curios- 
ity and fancy to the utmost. He is, as he pleases, the 
wizard or the satirist. While deriding romances, he 
becomes in the highest degree romantic ; and, while 
he forces laughter at extravagance, renders the possible 
almost as wild and strange as the supernatural ma- 
chinery which it is his design to ridicule. If magic 
changes the heroic into the vulgar to vex Don Quixote, 
it also changes for our delight the vulgar into the he- 
roic. Is it that Cervantes takes himself the place of 
the old enchanters^ and, while seeming to furnish a 



38 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

countercliarm to their cunning, gets around us by spells 
more potent of his own ? We, as well as the hero, are 
again in the days of chivalry. To us, as unto him, 
the windmill becomes a giant ; and to us, as unto him, 
the inn is transformed to a castle. We, as well as the 
hero, are again in the days of necromancy. We dream 
queer dreams with him in the solitude of the moun- 
tain ; and with him we see unearthly sights in the 
cave of Montesinos. Taken singly as a narrative, 
this w^ork is a miracle of genius. In the mere story 
we have a most surprising range of feelings and activi- 
ties. Within this range we have persons of every 
grade and every profession. We have, besides, num- 
berless oddities and individualities of character. We 
hava evidence of an insight that has gone searchingly 
through the windings of the soul, and of an observing 
faculty that has traversed the length and breadth of 
society. We find abstract thought in union with 
practical sense, and satirical sagacity tempered with 
a gentle wisdom. We find learning that does not 
stifien, but mellow diction, that enriches the texture 
of the composition, but does not overlay the surface. 
This learning is indeed so gracefully woven into the 
web of the narrative that it is only on reflection that 
we discover the vastness of its amount. Altho^iigh the 
outward form of the story is burlesque and satirical, 
there is a soul within it of grief and pity. Although 
it treats of life on one side in a spirit of idealism, and 
on another in a spirit of criticism, — pushing the ideal- 
ism to absurdity and the criticism to irony, — it is not 
that the irony may flatter the cynical — it is not that 
the absurdity may amuse the idle ; it is that both the 



DON QUIXOTE. 39 

irony and the absurdity may suggest lessons of a 
wholesome moderation and of a generous philosophy. 
The leading character in this romance has been va- 
riously and even oppositely criticized. Sismondi re- 
gards him in a serious light, and seems to side with 
those who consider his story as the most melancholy 
book that was ever written. " Cervantes," he ob- 
serves, " has in some degree exhibited the vanity of 
noble feelings and the illusions of heroism. He has 
described in Don Quixote an accomplished man, who 
is, notwithstanding, a constant object of ridicule ; a 
man brave beyond all that history can boast, who con- 
fronts the most terrific, not only of mortal, but of 
supernatural, perils ; a man whose high sensG of honor 
permits him not to hesitate for a single moment in 
the accomplishment of his promises or to deviate in 
the slightest degree from truth. As disinterested as 
brave, he combats only for virtue ; and when he covets 
a kingdom, it is only that he may bestow it on his 
faithful squire. He is the most constant and the most 
faithful of lovers- — the most humane of warriors — 
the most accomplished of cavaliers. With a taste as 
refined as his intellect is cultivated, he surpasses in 
goodness, in loyalty, and in bravery the Amadises and 
Orlandos whom he has chosen for his models. His 
most generous enterprises end, however, only in blows 
and bruises. His glory is the bane of those around 
him. The giants with whom he believes he is fight- 
ing are only windmills. The ladies whom he delivers 
from the enchanters are harmless women, whom he 
terrifies upon their journey and whose servants he 
maltreats. While he is thus redressing wrongs and 



40 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

repairing injuries, the bachelor, Alonzo Lopez, very 
properly tells him, ' I do not precisely understand 
your mode of redressing wrongs ; but as for me, you 
have made me crooked when I was straight enough 
before ; and have broken my leg, which will never be 
set right all the days of my life. Nor do I understand 
how you repair injuries ; for that which I have received 
from you will never be repaired. It is the most un- 
fortunate adventure that ever befell me when I met 
you in search of adventures.' " In this manner does 
Sismondi, with brevity and clearness, give the poetic 
side of Don Quixote's character. 

Hallam presents another version of the famous 
knight. The author, he maintains, beginning with 
the intention of ridiculing the fictions of the age, ad- 
heres to it steadily through the first part. The critic 
insists that, in this division of the story, the Don is 
simply a madman. He fancies that chivalry still ex- 
ists ; he derives his sentiments from its romances and 
imitates their incidents. In the second part he holds 
that Cervantes changed his plan ; made his hero wise 
and eloquent ; and, therefore, gave the w^orld two 
Don Quixotes. In one part we have in Don Quixote 
nothing but the maniac ; in the other we have com- 
bined, in a single character, the maniac and the author. 
But Don Quixote is no more a maniac in the first part 
than he his in the second ; and, if talents can be al- 
lowed him in the second part, they cannot be denied 
to him in the first. In the first part, as well as in the 
second, Cervantes not only insists that his hero pos- 
sessed sane qualities, but sane qualities of a high 
order ; nay, he illustrates that fact by causing him to 



DON QUIXOTE. 41 

utter some of the finest passages in the book. It is 
in the first part that Cervantes puts into his mouth an 
eloquent oration on the comparative merit of arts and 
letters. " Don Quixote," the narrator observes, " pur- 
sued his discourse so rationally that his auditors could 
scarcely think him insane. On the contrary, most of 
them, being gentlemen to whom the exercise of arms 
appertains, they listened to him with particular pleas- 
ure." Still more: *' The auditors were concerned 
that a man who possessed so good an understanding 
should, on a particular point, be so egregiously in the 
want of it." Surely the instances of madness in a 
single direction are not so infrequent as to place such 
madness out from the use of fiction. Were they even 
less frequent than they are, the character of Don Quix- 
ote would still be conceivable, and consistent with 
romance. Let it be considered, too, that the insanity 
of Don Quixote was not only partial, but very tran- 
sient. It came upon him late in life ; it lasted but a 
few weeks ; it closed in the lucidness of an exhausted 
and dying man. The character is true to itself when 
judged, as it ought to be, poetically ; for, after the 
first chapters, Cervantes raised it into poetry. It is 
true that in the second part Don Quixote is more fre- 
quently wise and eloquent than in the first ; because, 
in the second part, he is oftener in society that could 
elicit wisdom and call out eloquence. Taking the 
whole result, the character has in both parts the con- 
tinuity and oneness which constitute artistic identity. 

Appreciated in his entireness, the knight is a glori- 
ous inhabitant of the imagination world. He appears 
every where in fine relations to humanity. In his worst 



42 ILLUSTRATIOXS OF GENIUS. 

mistakes lie is lovable ; and there is much more in him 
of what is admirable than of what is laughable. He 
is kind in his home, and in his neighborhood he is 
respected. With men he is frank and brave ; with 
women he is refined and more than courteous. Of 
high bearing and of jealous dignity, he does not shun 
the humble ; and, though no abuser of the rich, if a 
side is to be taken, he takes it with the poor. Filled 
with thoughts which, though out of season and out of 
place, are yet as sublime as they are benevolent, he 
lives always in sight of good intentions ; he is delighted 
in the joy of all around him ; it gives him pleasure to 
promote and to increase it ; he designs to exalt his 
friends ; he designs to bless the world ; and if, while 
walking in this trance of generous visions, he comes 
into rude collision with stern actuality, — if in this 
collision he gets wounded and bruised, — he does not 
complain or whine, but is as cheerful as he is patient. 
He is innocent of heart ; pure in his thoughts ; in 
principles, of invincible integrity ; in actions, of stain- 
less honesty and honor ; in speech, of virgin delicacy 
and of gracious elegance. Don Quixote really never 
falls in our respect. He is never degraded by his mis- 
chances. He is always elevated, and elevated in spite 
of the most ridiculous situations. He does not for a 
moment forget his personal dignity ; for in his most 
infatuated actions there is a spirit of grandeur. Look, 
for example, at the nobleness of his ideas on his sup- 
posed vocation. "Knight errantry," he contends, "is 
equal to poetry, and something beyond it. It is a sci- 
ence, also, which comprehends all or most of the other 
sciences. The knight must be learned in the law. 



DON QUIXOTE. 43 

experienced in distributive and commutative justice, to 
assign each man his own. He must be conversant 
with divinity, to explain clearly and distinctly the 
Christian faith which he professes. He must be 
skilled in medicine, that he may know diseases and 
how to cure them. He must be an astronomer, that he 
may be able always to ascertain time and place by 
looking at the stars. He must be adorned with all the 
theological and cardinal virtues ; he must have faith in 
God ; he must be constant in love ; he must be chaste 
in his thoughts, modest in his words, liberal in good 
works, valiant in exploits, patient in toils, charitable to 
the needy ; and steadfastly he must adhere to truth, even 
at the expense of life." "The poor knight," he again 
observes, " can only manifest his rank by his virtues. 
He must be well bred, courteous, kind, and obliging ; 
not proud, not arrogant, no murmurer ; above all, he 
must be charitable." " Since, my Sancho," he ex- 
claims, in another place, " we seek a Christian reward, 
let our works be conformable to the religion we pro- 
fess. In slaying giants, we must destroy pride and 
arrogance ; we must vanquish envy by generosity ; 
WTath, by a serene and humble spirit ; gluttony and 
sloth, by temperance and vigilance ; licentiousness, by 
chastity ; and indolence, by traversing the world in 
search of every honorable opportunity of renown." 
Cervantes has, in spirit, made his hero according to the 
standard which his hero here applies to knighthood. 
Richly endowed in moral qualities, he is not less richly 
endowed intellectually. He is a man of culture. He 
is also a man of genius — of genius with all its inten- 
sities and sympathies. His faculties are not balanced, 



44 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

but they are uncommoii ; and, wlien not disturbed by 
his disorder, they exhibit every sort of mental power. 
His memory is quick and retentive ; his imagination 
strong, brilliant, and graceful ; his intellect active and 
acute. His genius has an eloquence that does it jus- 
tice in perfect speech — speech that answers to every 
play of emotion and to every mood of thought ; that 
is, grave for deliberate wisdom, musical for poetic 
fancy, simple for easy talk, gathering force as needed 
from gentleness to vehemence ; it rises as the senti- 
ment rises, from familiar aphorism to lofty declama- 
tion. Thus it singularly happens, that, while Cer- 
vantes was scourging fictitious errants out of the 
world, he was presenting an ideal of the truest knight- 
hood that has ever been in it ; indeed, that must 
always be in it, until manly principles and disin- 
terested affections cease to have existence. Such 
knighthood must last and live while minds of high 
design and hearts of wise embrace last and live. No 
weapon of ridicule can harm it ; the sharpest arrows 
of the most burning wit are shivered and quenched 
against its panoply of virtue. 

One of the most striking characteristics of the Cer- 
V antic manner is the way in which dignity is so often 
in union with oddity, tenderness mth burlesque, and 
the pathetic with the droll. The sacking of Don 
Quixote's library is an instance. This is one of the 
finest scenes in the book. Grave and broad, ludicrous 
and yet wise, it is eminently Cerv antic. The group- 
ing of the characters is excellent. They admirably 
contrast with and relieve each other. There is the 
sedate but cheerful curate, evidently learned in the lore 



DON quixotj:. 45 

of his profession, yet showing by his knowledge and 
his likings that he has walked in the enchanted gar- 
dens of romance, and that occasionally he lingers in 
them still. Like Dr. Johnson, he cannot let any sort 
of book pass through his hands without a perusal of its 
title and a peep into its contents. He seems to love 
a book because it is a hook ; and it is in sorrow more 
than anger that he gives the worst and the most ab- 
surd over to the secular arm of the housekeeper and 
the niece. The shrewd, observant, intelligent, good- 
natured barber answers well to the place he holds — al- 
most beside, scarcely below, this mild and affectionate 
priest. There he works busily, as the intermediate 
official between the judge and the executioners ; some- 
times suggesting a remark, sometimes venturing on an 
opinion, but always submitting to the decision of his 
superior. The housekeeper is prepared to carry into 
effect every sentence of condemnation with an alacrity 
that would satisfy the most zealous advocate of capital 
punishment. Nor is the niece on her side slow to aid. 
" There is no reason," said the niece, " why any of 
them should be spared ; for they have all been mischief 
makers : so let them all be thrown out of the window 
into the court yard, and, having made a pile of them, 
set fire to it." The priest falls upon volumes of 
poetry. These he is inclined to spare ; for he thinks 
they can do no harm. " O, sir," said the niece, " pray 
order them to be burned with the rest; for, should 
my uncle be cured of this distemper of chivalry, he 
may possibly, by reading such books, take it into his 
head to turn shepherd and wander through the fields 
playing on a pipe : what is still worse, he may turn 



46 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

poet, which they say is an incurable and a contagious 
disease." 

' While these deliberations were proceeding Don 
Quixote was confined to his chamber, after returning 
wounded and bruised from his first sally. But " the 
first thing which occurred to him when he left his bed 
was to visit his books ; and, not finding the room, he 
went up and down looking for it ; when, coming to the 
former situation of the door, he felt with his hands, 
and stretched about on all sides, without speaking a 
word for some time." His friends had the place 
closed up ; and his niece persuades him that enchant- 
ers have taken away his library. The poor knight 
groping about for his books, for his long-known and 
much-loved companions, is truly a pathetic picture. 
His very madness made these books the more valuable 
to him ; for it made them real. With what riches and 
glories did his books fill that small chamber ! When 
he entered into his closet and shut himself from the out- 
ward sphere of sense, — when he called before him the 
spirits that slept around him on the shelves, — then his 
estate was no barren patch in La Mancha : it was an 
empire ; it was a world ; it was more than one world ; 
it was many worlds : then his life was no worn thing 
of half a century ; it was an unwasting and a perpetual 
youth. There he conversed with King Arthur and 
paid compliments to Queen Madisama ; spent summer 
days with Palmerin of England and wore out winter 
nights with Amadis of Gaid ; fought "with the giant 
Morgante, consulted with the magician Merlin, and 
held tournay with the companions of the round table. 
In the illusions, too, of the hero about Dulcinea, 



DON QUIXOTE. 47 

there is as much of what is noble and affecting as there 
is of what is laughable and amusing. Dulcinea was 
the name which Don Quixote gave to the mistress of 
his heart ; for a knight must of necessity have a sov- 
ereign lady to whom his loyalty and love should be 
devoted. The original of this imaginary mistress was 
a peasant girl of whom he had formerly been enam- 
oured ; although it does not appear that she either knew 
of his passion or cared about it. This peasant girl — 
as the story has it — resided in a neighboring town 
named Toboso ; and thence the high-sounding designa- 
tion, " Dulcinea del Toboso." The rustic maiden is, in 
the imagination of her heroic lover, transformed to a 
princess of mental perfection, of dazzling beauty ; and, 
being so transformed, the inward image of his mind 
appears always to him as an outward reality. Setting 
out on his third sally, he determines to visit this peer- 
less damsel ; and, for that purpose, takes the direction 
of Toboso. On a former occasion he intrusted San- 
cho with a letter to this princess, with the promise of 
three ass colts if successful in his mission. The cun- 
ning squire pretended that he had delivered the letter. 
But his vulgar conceptions can keep no pace with 
the high- wrought fancies of his master. Unwittingly 
Sancho says, that, when he saw Dulcinea, she was win- 
nowing wheat. Don Quixote assures him that he was 
under a delusion — that what he took for a farm yard 
must, indeed, be the court of a palace, in which this 
" paragon of gentility and beauty " was amusing herself 
with works of richest embroidery. Enchanters must 
have deceived him. Sancho, who had been at his wits' 
end, takes this hint, and uses it afterwards to deceive 



48 liLUSTKATIOXS OF GENIUS. 

the Don. They approach Toboso. Although it is yet 
night, Don Quixote insists on being led to Dulcinea's 
palace. Sancho is confounded. He has to confess 
that he has never seen the Lady Dulcinea. *' I am as 
incapable," he says, " of giving any account of the 
Lady Dulcinea as I am of pulling the moon by the 
nose : " and it is now, in telling the truth, that the 
knight accuses him of lying. " Sancho, Sancho," an- 
swered Don Quixote, "there is a time to jest, and a 
time when jests are unseasonable. What ! because I 
say that I never saw nor spoke to the mistress of my 
soul, must thou say so likewise, when thou knowest it 
to be untrue ? " Sancho then persuades his master to 
retire to a neighboring grove and there await the re- 
sult of his message to Dulcinea. When Sancho had 
got his master thus concealed he went but a little dis- 
tance on his way to Toboso : then he alighted from 
Dapple, and, seating himself under a tree, began, in 
his perplexity, a dialogue of Sancho with Sancho. 
" Tell me now, brother Sancho," quoth he, " whither 
is your worship going ? Are you going to seek 
some ass that is lost ? " "No, verily." " Then what 
are you going to seek? " "Why, I go to look for a 
thing of nothing — a princess ; the sum of beauty, 
and all heaven together." " Well, Sancho, and where 
do you think to find all this ? " " Where ? In 
the great city of Toboso." " Very well ; and, pray, 
who sent you on this errand ? " " Why, the reno^vned 
knight Don Quixote de la Mancha, who redresses 
wrongs, who gives drink to the hungry and meat to 
the thirsty." " All this is mighty well : and do you 
know her house, Sancho r " " My master says it must 



DON QUIXOTE. 49 

be some royal palace or stately castle." " And have 
you ever seen her ? " " Neither I nor my master have 
ever seen her." " And do you think it would be right 
or advisable that the people of Toboso should know 
you are coming to kidnap their princesses and to lead 
them astray ? What if, for this offence, they should 
come and grind your ribs to powder, and not leave a 
whole bone in your skin ? " " Truly they would be 
much in the right of it ; unless they please to consider 
that 7, being only a messenger, am not in fault." 
" Trust not to that, Sancho ; for the Manchegans are 
very choleric, and their honor so ticklish that it will 
not bear touching." Sancho started from his revery 
and bethought him that his master was mad — a man 
who took windmills for giants ; mules, dromedaries, 
flocks of sheep for armies of fighting men. This 
being the case, it would not be difficult to make him 
believe that a country wench, the first he should alight 
on, was the Lady Dulcinea. " If he should not be- 
lieve it," soliloquizes Sancho, " I will swear it ; if Tie 
swears, I will outs wear him ; and if he persists, I mil 
persist the more ; so that mine shall still be uppermost, 
come what will. By this plan I may, perhaps, tire 
him of sending me on such messages, or he may take 
it into his head that some wicked enchanter has 
changed his lady^s form out of spite." Then occurs 
the incident of the three country wenches riding upon 
donkeys. Sancho persuades his master that Dulcinea 
and her two attendants, all riding upon palfreys, have 
come to visit him. Catching the halter of one of the 
donkeys, and trying to imitate Don Quixote's phrase- 
ology, Sancho exclaims, " Queen, princess, duchess of 
4 



50 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

beauty, let your highness and greatness be pleased to 
receive into your grace and good liking your captive 
knight, who stands there all turned into stone, all 
disorder, and without any pulse, to find himself be- 
fore your magnificent presence. I am Sancho Panza, 
his squire ; and he is that wayworn knight Don 
Quixote, otherwise the knight of the sorrowful figure." 
Don Quixote, kneeling down by Sancho, — already on 
his knees, — takes a still higher strain. The damsels, 
very efi*ectually astonished, not less at the personages 
than at their language, got away from them as quick- 
ly as they could, and in a manner, too, that left the 
mirror of chivalry confounded at the flower of lady- 
hood. The half bewilderment and puzzled doubt of 
Don Quixote at the close of this scene is not more 
ludicrous than it is pathetic. " But tell me, San- 
cho," he inquires, " that which appeared to me a pan- 
el, — was it a side saddle, or a pillion? " "It was a 
side saddle," answered Sancho, " with a field cover- 
ing worth half a kingdom." " And that I could not 
see all this ! " murmured the knight. " Again I say, 
and a thousand times I mil repeat it, I am the most 
unfortunate of men." 

In nothing is the insanity of Don Quixote more 
evident than in this dream of Dulcinea ; and yet there 
was much that was noble in the dream. It was a 
dream, of a pure and a glowing soul. It was a dream 
which a beautiful nature only could nourish and sus- 
tain ; it was a dream which a beautiful nature alone 
could conceive or could enjoy. It idealized woman 
and it threw honor over womanhood ; and the ideal was 
not merely that of outward loveliness, but of inward 



DON QUIXOTE. 51 

excellence. Such a vision came never from a gross or 
sensual mind ; but from a mind that, even in its disor- 
der, enshrined the female character in the light of 
sanctity and reverence. This lustre that burned in his 
own heart flashed out upon the plainest face, and, for 
the moment, covered it with rapturous illumination. 
The peasant girl was not always in his vision a prin- 
cess, but never failed to receive from him the homage 
of a woman ; and in the shepherdess clad in russet by 
the lowliest door he saw one as entitled to his respect 
as if her hut were indeed a palace. The mistake 
which clad rustic girls with royal apparel, and which 
gave to homely maidens resplendent loveliness, was 
one of those mistakes of which Charles Lamb remarks 
that they come from within. It was the lambency of a 
soul, delirious though it was, bathing all that was 
feminine in its own effulgence. Cervantes, in his own 
person and in that of his hero, treats woman in all 
ranks with deference and affection. Some exceptions 
there may be, but not so many as to be discordant 
with his general tone of courtesy and reverence. Such 
is not the usual manner in comic or satiric literature. 
No treatment can be more grinding, more derisive, 
more derogatory than that which woman has had in 
this kind of literature — no treatment more suited to 
undermine belief in her truth and to infuse scepticism 
as to her purity. / But the man who mocks woman or 
abases her, who holds her up to laughter or reproach, 
brilliantly as he may write or speak, has not the 
diviner element of genius in his breast. The genius 
of every man who writes out of a large humanity 
does always bless and beautify her. Indeed, all such 



52 ILLXJSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

genius has in it a feminine element : by means of tliat 
element it enters into the heart of woman, and, through 
emotion, understands her deepest nature. Woman, 
however, pays back to manly genius more than it 
gives her. She does much to correct and to purify 
it — to guard it from asperity of temper — to draw 
it from seclusive meditation — to hold it in living 
interest with the common relations of the world ; 
and, being a gentle medium between the actual and 
ideal, she softens the contrast, reconciles the isolation 
of thought to the geniality of life, and gives to the 
labors of art the encouragement of affection. Wo- 
manly sympathy is to manly genius what we might 
conceive Ophelia might have been to Hamlet had 
Hamlet been less perplexed and had Ophelia been 
less afflicted.*^ 

And Sancho, too, — how rich he is on the other side ! 
— at once clown and critic, cynic and buffoon, philos- 
opher and simpleton — a tone flowing over with pot- 
tages and proverbs — a walking concentration of jokes 
and juices — an incarnation of gormandizing and 
grumbling — an imbodied mockery of etherealism, the 
concentrated personification of a carnival. He is the 
Falstaff of the vulgar. After his own manner, he is 
as sensual ; but the sensuality of Sancho is that of an 
unlettered and superstitious peasant ; the sensuality 
of Falstaff is that of an educated and unbelieving 
epicurean. He has as loose notions of right and 
wrong as Falstaff; and he holds unprofitable ardor in 
the same contempt. Like Falstaff, he is of easy tem- 
per and of easy conscience ; he has similar abhorrence 
of leanness and thin potations ; and in the measure of 



DON QUIXOTE. 53 

his condition and his culture, the squire of Cervantes, 
as the knight of Shakspeare, is not only witty in him- 
self, but the cause of wit in others. There is one 
thing in which Sancho has resemblance to his mas- 
ter ; and that is, according to his nature, he is as much 
a visionary. A man may be a visionary of coarse- 
ness as well as of idealism. The lowest natures have 
their dreams ; the voluptuary dreams as well as the 
saint ; the hog of Epicurus as well as the watcher 
of the temple. Stout people, of middle age, have 
their dreams as well as those who are younger and 
more slender ; and there are dreams of turtle soup as 
well as dreams of turtle doves. Men who are active 
and anxious about the main chance have their dreams 
as well as those who forget it in higher fancies ; and 
the market has its visions as well as the millennium. 
The politician has his dreams as well as the poet. 
The young bard that broods over his mtiiden epic is 
not more elated than the new member that broods over 
his maiden speech ; and if the bard fondly hopes that 
he may make a large stride towards the pinnacle of 
Parnassus, no less fondly does the new member antici- 
pate that he is about to move for a high place in the 
cabinet. The most earthly dream as well as the most 
enthusiastic ; and, while they often dream as wildly as 
Don Quixote, they dream at the same time as selfishly 
as Sancho. The squire had visions as well as his 
master ; but they were of another kind and of another 
order. The master dreamed of great deeds ; the squire 
dreamed of good eating. The dream of the knight 
was of a regenerated world, in which right would be 
vindicated and wrong would be conquered ; the dream 



54 ILLUSTKATIOXS OF GEXIUS. 

of the squire was of a comfortable island, where lie 
might sleep as many hours as he desired, and have 
pullets when he awoke fatter than Camacho's. 

The culminating point of Sancho's character is in 
the opening of the second part. He is not so rustic 
as when he set out ; and his discourse is not so incon- 
sistent with his intellect or station as at times it ap- 
pears afterwards. He has mind enough to give his 
conversation point, but not so much as to take it out 
from the sphere of reality. He presents himself in 
this stage of the narrative as a most original compound 
of shrewdness and absurdity — of oddity and natural- 
ness — of grotesque assumption and pompous airs — 
of sordid cunning, yet devoted fidelity. His master, 
after the first sally, is brought home bruised and 
broken. Sancho, too, has suffered ; but he is soon 
able to come and see his master. His dispute then 
with the housekeeper, who is unwilling to admit him, 
is admirable. " Paunch-gutted ! " she exclaims, " get 
home ! It is by you that our master is led astray and 
carried rambling about the country like a vagabond." 
" Thou devilish housekeeper ! " retorted Sancho, " 'tis 
I am led astray. It was your master that led me this 
dance. He tempted me from home with promises of 
an island, which I still hope for.'' " May the cursed 
island choke thee ! " answered the niece. " And, pray, 
what are islands ? Are they any thing eatable, glut- 
ton, cormorant, as thou art? " " They are not to be 
eaten," said Sancho, " but governed." Not less amus- 
ing are his commentaries, as the bachelor Carrasco 
remarks, on the adventures which he and his master 
have gone through as recorded in the first part of the 



DON QUIXOTE. 55 

history. " Peace, Sancho," said Don Quixote ; " let 
the signor bachelor proceed, that I may know what is 
further said of me." " And of me^ too," quoth Sancho. 
" As sure as I live," answered the bachelor, "you are 
the second person of the history ; nay, there are some 
that would rather hear you talk than the finest fellows 
of them all ; though there are some who charge you 
with being too credulous in expecting the government 
o/ that island." " There is still sunshine on the wall," 
quoth Don Quixote ; " and when Sancho is more ad- 
vanced in age, with the experience that years bestow, 
he will be better qualified to be a governor than he 
is at present." " 'Fore God, sir," quoth Sancho, " if 
I am not fit to govern an island at these years, I shall 
be no better able at the age of Mathusalem. I have 
seen governors ere now, who, in my opinion, do not 
come up to the sole of my shoe ; and yet they are 
called ' your lordship,' and eat their victuals upon 
plate. I can tell the bachelor Carrasco that my master 
will not throw the kingdom he gives me into a rotten 
sack ; for I have felt my pulse ; I find myself strong 
enough to rule kingdoms, to govern islands ; and so 
much I have signified before to my master." 

Sancho had not the same confidence about his wife ; 
for, if Heaven were to rain down kingdoms upon earth, 
he doubted if any crown of them would fit her. We 
have a dialogue between Sancho and his wife which 
rather confirms this idea. " Look you, Sancho," said 
his wife ; " since you have been a knight errant 
man you talk in such a roundabout manner that no- 
body understands you." "It is enough, wife, that 
God understands me. See," he says, " that Dapple is 



56 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

cared for. We are not going," lie tells her, " to a 
wedding, but to roam about the world, and to give 
and take with giants." And all this, he avers, would 
be flower of lavender if they had not to do with 
Yuangesians and enchanted Moors. He is, however, 
determined to marry his daughter to a grandee. " Not 
so, Sancho," answered Teresa ; " the best way is to 
marry her to her equal ; because, in a loftier station, 
she would not know how to conduct herself. " Peace, 
fool ! " quoth Sancho. " She has only to practise two 
or three years, and gravity will sit as well on her as if 
it were made for her." " Take care what you say, 
husband ; for I am afraid this countess-ship will be my 
daughter's undoing. But you must do as you please ; 
make her a duchess or a princess ; but it shall never be 
with my consent. The day that I see her a countess 
I shall reckon that I am laying her in her grave. But 
I say again, you must do as you like ; for to this end 
are poor women born ; they must obey their husbands 
if they are ever such blockheads." She then began 
to weep ; but Sancho relaxed and did all he could to 
comfort her. He assured her that, although he must 
make his daughter a countess, he would put it off as 
long as possible. 

Charles Lamb, as fine a critic of humor as ever 
wrote, is angry with Cervantes for the increased im- 
portance which he gives to Sancho in the second part. 
Cervantes no doubt was tempted by the popularity of 
Sancho to allow him larger scope and more varied op- 
portunities of display as the work advanced. It is not 
improbable that Sancho was a favorite with Cervantes. 
Though Cervantes acted from either of these motives, 



DON QUIXOTE. 57 

or from botli, we see nothing to condemn him for. 
Others have done the same. Shakspeare, leaving 
kings and councillors to fate, keeps side by side vdth 
roguish FalstafF through three long dramas ; even in a 
fourth he refers, to him with evident affection ; and, in 
humor touched with sadness, melting the comic into 
the tender and turning burlesque to a requiem, he tells 
the story of his death bed. Cervantes does not go 
thus far with Sancho ; but he does with his beloved 
knight. He stays with him until he hears his latest 
word. He permits Sancho to go to his home in cor- 
pulence and health, and he that chooses may complete 
his biography ; but of his gentle and renowned en- 
thusiast none shall ever have to continue a half-told 
story. Sancho may be revived, often has been, often 
is, often will be ; but Quixote or Falstaff never has 
been, never can be, repeated ; they spoke immortal 
words once for all, then found an unapproachable and 
an everlasting rest. Cervantes then does not desert 
his hero — he does not give him to dishonor. Sancho, 
it is to be admitted, appears more prominently than 
he did before ; but, except in a few cases, he remains 
in subjection to his master. He intrudes oftener, but 
not with insolence. His freedom is not greater than 
it was at first ; and he submits to the least reproof. 
If he has become less silly and more witty, his im- 
provement is due to his master ; and this debt he con- 
fesses with humble and with frequent acknowledg- 
ment. Indeed, as his intelligence improves, his admi- 
ration grows to reverence ; and, strangely enough, his 
delusion increases with his admiration and intelligence. 
If for a moment, in conversation with the duchess, he 



58 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

derides his master's wits, the reply which he makes 
when the duchess taunts him with following a mad- 
man atones for the ojffence by ks affection and loyalty, 
expressed in the eloquent simplicity of nature. " I 
cannot help," he says, " but follow him; follow him I 
must ; we are both of the same town ; I have eaten 
his bread ; I love him, and he returns my love ; he 
gave me his ass colts ; and, above all, I am faithful ; 
so that nothing can part us but the sexton's shovel. 
And if your highness does not choose to give me that 
government you promised, God made me without it ; 
and perhaps it may be all the better for my con- 
science if I do not get it." Still he does not give it 
up ; for afterwards, urging his fidelity as a claim for 
promotion, he says, " Case me in that same govern- 
ment, and you shall see wonders; for a good squire 
will make a good governor." Sancho would never ad- 
mit that he could be ungrateful or untrue. " This, he 
insists, might be so with one born among the mallows ; 
but not, he avers, with one like him, whose soul was 
covered four inches thick with the grease of an old 
Christian." 

But that at which Lamb is especially indignant is 
the base treatment to which Cervantes subjects Don 
Quixote in the palace of the duke. " Illustrious ro- 
mancer," he exclaims, " were the fine frenzies which 
possessed the brain of thy own Quixote a fit subject, 
as in the second part, to be exposed to the jeers of 
duennas and serving men ? to be monstered and shown 
up at the heartless banquets of great men ? Was that 
pitiable infirmity which in thy first part misleads him 
always from within into half ludicrous but more than 



DON QUIXOTE. 59 

half compassionable and admirable errors not infliction 
enough from Heaven, that men by studied artifices 
must desire to practice upon the humor, to inflame 
where they should soothe it ? Why, Goneril would 
have blushed to practise upon the abdicated king at 
this rate, and the she wolf Regan not have endured to 
play the pranks upon his fled wits which thou hast 
made thy Quixote suffer in duchesses' halls and at the 
hands of that unworthy nobleman." Pathetic elo- 
quence like this cannot but move us ; if by nothing 
else, by the evidence it affords of the sensitive and lov- 
ing nature of him who wrote it. Yet I cannot think 
that the author introduced his hero unfeelingly into 
these circumstances. It was not for want of pity, not 
even of reverence, for his hero that led the author, 
I conceive, to the choice of such a situation ; but a 
moral purpose, which without it would not have been 
complete. He thus pictures, with melancholy force, 
the inward hardness that may be covered by outward 
pomp ; he exhibits with tragical impressiveness the 
cruelty with which surfeited epicureanism may seek 
amusement in the simplicity of unsuspecting innocence 
and in the oddities of blameless misfortune. Justice 
demanded this situation. Cervantes had shown the 
barbarism of the unwashed ; it was right for him to 
show also the barbarism of the dainty. He had 
placed his hero in wayside hostelries ; he had exposed 
him to the lower rabble : he now lodged him in a 
sumptuous castle, and left him to the mercy of the 
higher rabble. Properly, the case is darkened with 
the latter ; because there is more innate contempt, more 
power of contrivance, more means of mockery, and 



60 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

more mind to use them. The excess in the balance of 
insult, and the whole sum of injury, stand against the 
titled. And this is according to truth ; for, when 
those who have superior advantages use them unwor- 
thily, they are the basest of the base. Let such ap- 
pear as elegant as they may, they are essentially vul- 
gar. The vulgarity of rank is, therefore, the v/orst of 
all vulgarity. The vulgarity of the mob is rude only 
in thoughtlessness or cruel only in passion ; and, when 
reflection comes and passion cools, it is often succeeded 
by the frankest repentance and by generous reparation. 
But the vulgarity which takes liberties on the ground 
of wealth or station is ingrained ; it is unredeemed 
and unredeemable. Be the person who does this king 
or queen, duke or duchess, that person is vulgar. The 
elevated cannot sport with those below them without 
being vulgar ; and, according to the distance to which 
their conventional training has removed them from the 
natural promptings of the social instincts, their vul- 
garity increases in repulsiveness. But if the sport in 
which they would make their fellow-men the instru- 
ments of their pleasure be painful or degrading, then 
they are more than vulgar ; they are inhuman. But in 
this treatment of Don Quixote, perhaps, if we look 
deeply enough, we may discover some wounding mem- 
ories, some latent experience, of Cervantes himself. If 
this were so, then I confess my sympathies are with 
the author more than with his hero. The Spanish no- 
bility of that day did not presume a little on their 
rank ; and towards men of letters, so far as we can 
learn from the cautious manner in which men of let- 
ters, as dependants, were obliged to speak, the Span- 



DON QUIXOTE. 61 

ish nobility were equally sparing in social delicacy and 
in pecuniary generosity. Cervantes may have had to 
endure much of insolence from nobles who did not un- 
derstand the grandeur which would outlive their titles. 
It is certain he had to bear neglect and poverty ; it is 
equally certain that he bore them cheerfully and that 
he bore them bravely. This hero man, before he had 
sent out his hero knight, had done high deeds ; and, 
except the unpurchasable satisfaction which such deeds 
themselves afford, he had gained but poor reward. 
He carried about with him marks of his contest with 
fortune and with men. He had lost an arm at Le- 
panto ; he had worn the yoke in Algiers ; he had con- 
spired against his tyrants ; he had led his comrades to 
attempted flight. Enthusiasm sustained him in battle 
and captivity ; maimed and indigent, it sustained him 
still. He excited men to musing and to mirth; he 
caused them to look at folly through the mingled tears 
of both ; and, as they looked, he taught them wisdom. 
After doing all thus he speaks, doubtless knowingly, 
in the person of his hero : " O accursed poverty, why 
dost thou intrude upon gentlemen and delight in per- 
secuting the well born in preference to all others ? 
Why dost thou force them to cobble their own shoes, 
and on the same threadbare garments wear buttons of 
every color ? Wretched is the poor gentleman, who, 
while he pampers honor, starves his body ; dining 
scurvily or fasting unseen with his door locked ; then 
out in the street he marches, making a hypocrite of his 
toothpick ! Wretched he, I say, whose honor is in a 
continual state of alarm ; who thinks that at the dis- 
tance of a league every one discovers a patch upon his 



62 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

shoe, the greasiness of his hat, the threadbareness of 
his cloak, and even the cravings of his stomach/' 
Words that sound like these are evidently of more 
than fictitious import ; words that sound like these 
conceal the sadness that is in the heart by the laugh 
that is on the lip. Nor can I help attributing a satiri- 
cal meaning to the high favor in which Sancho stands 
with these wealthy entertainers. The sensualism of 
which he is the type is what the luxurious as well as 
the low the most enjoy, sometimes in a different form 
and sometimes in the same. Still, as ever, the luxu- 
rious are most attracted by arts that imbody sensual- 
ism and that appeal to it. 

And now that I am on the point of closing, I feel 
how much that might be said on this work I must 
leave unsaid. I have not been able even to allude to 
its episodes, many of them the choicest things in 
literature. I have given no illustration of its descrip- 
tions, so various and so splendid. I will offer no ex- 
cuse for not particularizing its several characters; for 
that would be to pass in review individuals from every 
grade of life of a nation the most varied in its man- 
ners and population that then existed in the world. 
The excellence of spirit in this story is a subject for 
unqualified approval. Never has life been painted 
with a finer mixture of its lights and shadows ; never 
has the gravity of its philosophy been relieved by so 
gracious a mirthfulness ; never has its wisdom been 
less repelling or more affectionate. Pervaded by re- 
ligion, without formality or exhortation, the tendency 
of it is to strengthen faith and reverence, to inspire 
Christian hope in every trial, and to urge Christian 



DON QUIXOTE. 63 

obedience in every temptation. Withal, the whole is 
bathed in the very light of humor — humor the most 
perfect that any single work has ever exhibited. And 
this light is as warm as it is transparent — a light in 
which the murkiest soul casts off its clouds, in which 
the sunny temper grows yet brighter, in which the 
innocent heart may bask and rejoice with a gladness 
that leaves nothing to regret behind. It is humor of 
that perfect kind which makes no alliance with in- 
decency, malice, or contempt — a humor in which we 
may safely laugh, and, when the laugh has ceased, not 
fear to pray. 

I have not explored my subject ; I have scarcely ap- 
proached it. I am not as the hardy climber, that works 
upward along the mountain, nor forbears until he has 
gained the summit ; I have rested upon the margin of 
its shadow. I am not as the strong diver, that plunges 
into deep waters and brings up treasures from the 
bottom ; I have lingered on the brink to muse. Like 
the African traveller who sounded rivers in the desert 
by casting in pebbles, watching for the circlets on the 
surface to tell him of the depth, I have only flung a 
few thoughts into the bosom of a mighty theme ; and 
although by doing so I discover that I cannot fathom 
it, I discover at the same time its profundity, its 
greatness. But yet something more I find also. 
Comparing the emotions that I have now with those 
which Don Quixote had once excited, I am made aware 
that years have been doing their work upon my mind. 
In youth we revel in the mirth of this story ; we laugh 
at the exploits of the knight ; we laugh at the misfor- 
tunes of the squire ; we have no reverence for the 



64 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

cHvalrous but bareboned imitation of Beltenebros; 
tbe famous recoverer of Mambrino's helmet ; we ex- 
tend no pity to tbe corpulent imbodiment of proverbs 
tbat rises beside him; we enjoy with all our hearts 
the capers which the merry lodgers of the inn com- 
pel him to perform in the air without aid of tight 
rope or slack rope ; his ilounderings are to us most 
exhilarating fun ; and, in imagination, we ourselves 
take hold upon the blanket. But, when time has 
taught us more sober lessons, — when we learn that we 
too have dreamed, that loe too have had our buffetings 
and blanketings, — we think differently. When we 
learn that we like^vise have often put the shapings of 
fancy for the substance of truth, the coinage of the 
brain for the creation of reality, the vision in the wish 
for the fulfilment in the fact, laughter is changed into 
reflection and musing takes the place of gayety. 
There is hidden meaning in these wondrous imagin- 
ings of Cervantes ; and experience, after many days, 
does not fail to show it. We have gleanings from 
them of life's purpose. We are here to do, and not to 
dream ; we are here to endure as much as to enjoy ; 
and, through doing and endurance, to grow — to grow 
in all that elevates the soul, in all that crowns it mth 
genuine dignity, in all that clothes it at the same time 
vvith honor and humility, in all that renders it more 
gentle as it becomes more commanding. In the same 
manner we have gloamings of life's nature. Life is 
not all meditation ; it is not all business ; it is not all 
in the ideal ; it is not all in the actual ; and that life 
is best in which these several elements are best united. 
The^ideal separate from the actual becomes mysticism 



DON QUIXOTJE. 65 

or extravagance ; the actual separate from the ideal 
degenerates into the sensual or into the sordid. It is 
in the proportioned combination of the ideal with the 
actual that life is highest ; it is in this proportioned 
combination that life presents the finest union of en- 
thusiasm and reflection, the finest harmony of beauty 
and of power. 



THE SCARLET LETTER. 

A ROMANCE, BY NATHANIEL HAWTHOKNE. 

No writer has this country produced that is more 
distinctive than Nathaniel Hawthorne. Familiar to 
us all is that quaintness of manner, which, at first 
simple as an old wife's talk, gradually beguiles us on 
until we are lost amidst the wildest scenes and the 
most ideal interests. In the Twice-told Tales and in 
the Mosses from an Old Manse, who has not felt the 
peculiar charm of that homely New England literal- 
ness which conceals beneath it fancies often as bold 
as Bunyan's and as exciting as those of Radcliffe ? 
The present story develops all the peculiarities of the 
author's genius, but of his genius put forth vrith a 
strength beyond any former effort. It has the unmis- 
takable stamp on it of the writer's mind ; yet there is 
a sort of power in it which we did not expect, though 
it does not surprise us. It is the most decisive pro- 
duction of the author and one of the remarl5;able sto- 
ries of the age. 

The introduction is an opening that will detain the 
reader on the threshold of the feast. This part of the 
volume gives a new illustration to the old truism, that 
with genius no topic is exhausted. We had no idea 



THE SCARLET LETTER. 67 

that the machinery of neglected documents could ever 
be used again without causing the reader to yawn at 
the beginning of a tale and deterring him from going 
farther. But, then, we always connected such docu- 
ments with the library of an old castle or the conceal- 
ments of an old church : it was new to us, indeed, 
to find that the materials of a romance could be secret- 
ed in a custom house. Not less new to us, and as 
delightful as new, the poetry and pathos with which, 
as with a halo and mist of fancy and emotion, he en- 
circles that old custom house, enlivened with gleam- 
ings of humor that fitfully and mildly irradiate them. 
Thus we might characterize the whole of the prepara- 
tory matter. The following passage, in allusion to his 
official relations and companions, we venture to tran- 
scribe : — 

" I doubt greatly — or rather, I do not doubt at all 
— whether any public functionary of the United States, 
either in the civil or military line, has ever had such 
a patriarchal body of veterans under his orders as my- 
self. The whereabouts of the oldest inhabitant was 
at once settled when I looked at them. For upwards 
of twenty years before this epoch the independent posi- 
tion of the collector had kept the Salem Custom House 
out of the whirlpool of political vicissitude, which 
makes the tenure of office generally so fragile. A sol- 
dier, — New England's most distinguished soldier, — 
he stood firmly on the pedestal of his gallant services ; 
and, himself secure in the wise liberality of the suc- 
cessive administrations through which he had held 
office, he had been the safety of his subordinates in 
many an hour of danger and heartquake. General 



b» ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

Miller was radically conservative ; a man over whose 
kindly nature habit had no slight influence ; attaching 
himself strongly to familiar faces, and with difficulty 
moved to change, even when change might have 
brought unquestionable improvement. Thus, on tak- 
ing charge of my department, I found few but aged 
men. They were ancient sea captains for the most 
part, who, after being tossed on every sea and stand- 
ing up sturdily against life's tempestuous blast, had 
finally drifted into this quiet nook, where, with little 
to disturb them except the periodical terrors of a 
presidential election, they one and all acquired a new 
lease of existence. Though by no means less liable 
than their fellow-men to age and infirmity, they had 
evidently some talisman or other that kept death at 
bay. Two or three of their number, as I was assured, 
being gouty and rheumatic, or perhaps bedridden, nev- 
er dreamed of making their appearance at the custom 
house during a large part of the year ; but, after a 
torpid winter, would creep out into the warm sunshine 
of May or June, go lazily about what they termed 
duty, and, at their own leisure and convenience, be- 
take themselves to bed again. I must plead guilty to 
the charge of abbreviating the official breath of more 
than one of these venerable servants of the republic. 
They were allowed, on my representation, to rest from 
their arduous labors, and soon afterwards — as if their 
sole principle of life had been zeal for their country's 
service, as I verily believe it was — withdrew to a bet- 
ter world. It is a pious consolation to me, that, 
through my interference, a sufficient space was allowed 
them for repentance of the evil and corrupt practices 



THE SCARLET LETTER. 69 

into which, as a matter of course, every custom-house 
officer must be supposed to fall. Neither the front nor 
the back entrance of the custom house opens on the 
road to paradise. 

'* The greater part of my officers were whigs. It 
was well for their venerable brotherhood that the new 
surveyor was not a politician, and, though a faithful 
democrat in principle, neither received nor held his 
office with any reference to political services. Had it 
been otherwise, — had an active politician been put 
into his influential post to assume the easy task of 
making head against a whig collector whose infirmi- 
ties withheld him from the personal administration of 
his office^ — hardly a man of the old corps would have 
drawn the breath of official life within a month after 
the exterminating angel had come up the custom-house 
steps. According to the received code in such matters, 
it would have been nothing short of duty in a politi- 
cian to bring every one of those white heads under 
the axe of the guillotine. It was plain enough to dis- 
cern that the old fellows dreaded some such discourtesy 
at my hands. It pained and at the same time amused 
me to behold the terrors that attended my advent ; to 
see a furrowed cheek, weather beaten by half a centu- 
ry of storm, turn ashy pale at the glance of so harm- 
less an individual as myself ; to detect, as one or an- 
other addressed me, the tremor of a voice which, in 
long-past days, had been wont to bellow through a 
speaking trumpet hoarsely enough to frighten Boreas 
himself to silence. They knew, these excellent old 
persons, that, by all established rule, — and, as re- 
garded some of them, weighed by their own lack of 



70 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

efficiency for business, — they ought to have given 
place to younger men more orthodox in politics and 
altogether fitter than themselves to serve our common 
uncle. I knew it, too, but could never quite find it in 
my heart to act upon the knowledge. Much and de- 
servedly to my own discredit, therefore, and consider- 
ably to the detriment of my official conscience, they 
continued, during my incumbency, to creep about the 
wharves and loiter up and down the custom-house 
steps. They spent a good deal of time, also, asleep in 
their accustomed corners, with their chairs tilted back 
against the wall ; awaking, however, once or twice in 
a forenoon to bore one another with the several thou- 
sandth repetition of old sea stories and mouldy jokes 
that had grown to be passwords and countersigns 
among them. 

*' The discovery was soon made, I imagine, that the 
new surveyor had no great harm in him. So, with 
lightsome hearts and the happy consciousness of being 
usefully employed, — in their own behalf at least, if 
not for our beloved country, — these good old gentle- 
men went through the various formalities of office. 
Sagaciously, under their spectacles, did they peep into 
the holds of Vessels. Mighty was their fuss about little 
matters ; and marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness 
that allowed greater ones to slip between their fingers. 
Whenever such a mischance occurred, — when a wag- 
on load of valuable merchandise had been smuggled 
ashore, at noonday perhaps and directly beneath their 
unsuspicious noses, — nothing could exceed the vigi- 
lance and alacrity with which they proceeded to lock, 
and double lock, and secure with tape and sealing wax 



THE SCARLET LETTER. 71 

all the avenues of the delinquent vessel. Instead of a 
reprimand for their previous negligence, the case 
seemed rather to require a eulogium on their praise- 
worthy caution after the mischief had happened — a 
grateful recognition of the promptitude of their zeal 
the moment that there was no longer any remedy." 

The sketch of the Old Inspector is perfect ; but 
we cannot extract it. To attempt to give an idea of 
it in other than the author's words would be presump- 
tion ; and to curtail it would be to do it violence. No 
picture that we remember in Addison or Goldsmith ex-. 
eels it. Hawthorne was a custom-house officer that he 
might draw the Old Inspector ; and glad, hearty 
laughter will the Inspector provoke when cabinets and 
their changes will be the lumber of old Time. The 
Old Inspector lived, it seems, a life in which the cares 
of office never spoiled his appetite, in which no sickly 
fancies or laborious thoughts disturbed digestion. 
Happy, however, though he was, according to the 
measure of his faculties and the activity of his func- 
tions, his course of life was not entirely untroubled. 
It had its painful incidents ; but they were not many. 
" The chief tragic event of the old man's life, our his- 
torian tells us, was his mishap with a certain goose 
which lived and died some twenty or forty years ago ; 
a goose of most promising figure, but which at table 
proved so inveterately tough that the carving knife 
would make no impression on its carcass, and it could 
only be divided with an axe and a handsaw." In 
happy contrast to this is the sketch of General Miller, 
serious, appreciating, happily conceived, and written 
with an impressive and kindly eloquence. 



72 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

The slight personal revealings which he gives of 
himself are not the least in the attractions of this in- 
troduction. We doubt not that all who sympathize 
with literature, and with its place in American culture 
and American fame, have feelings and opinions con- 
nected with the dismissal of Mr. Hawthorne with 
which party tendencies have no concern. Whatever 
may be our thought concerning the matter, we cannot 
regret the result, since humanity is the gainer, and the 
custom house no loser ; for, though humanity might 
lose a poet in the custom house, there is not much 
danger that the custom house will lose many officers 
in poetry. Yet, as our author found the hint of his 
story in the custom house, we are thankful to those 
who put him in : as he could not use it while he re- 
mained there, we are benefited by those who turned 
him out. 

It is a deep, dark, strange, and solemn story ; deep, 
dark, strange, and solemn in its scene, narrative, char- 
acters — in the meanings which it conceals and in the 
moral which it implies. Though most distinctly told, 
there is yet a mystic and a mythic obscurity around it. 
It is well placed in an age of witchcraft — in an age 
when religious feeling allied itself with ferocious super- 
stitions, and when the moral sense was a kind of internal 
savageism, ere the land was cleared of the Indian. 
When the settlements in New England were yet girded 
by dismal forests, and the minds of New England were 
ruled over by dismal doctrines, the events of this story 
are supposed to have occurred and its personages to 
have lived. A crowd is gathered round a prison door. 
Faces are anxious and expectant. The door opens, 



THE SCARLET LETTER. 73 

and out from the jail there comes a woman in the 
bloom of youth and beauty. An infant, some three 
months old, clings alarmed to her neck. On her breast 
she wears, shaped from scarlet cloth and elegantly 
embroidered, the letter A. This woman is Hester 
Prynne, an immigrant in the colony of about two years. 
She is to stand in the pillory, and this scarlet letter 
is the initial of her sin and of her shame. She might 
have been punished with death according to the severe 
laws of the colony ; but, as many mitigating circum- 
stances plead in her behalf, she is to be exposed on the 
pillory and to wear this letter for life. Not impu- 
dently, yet firmly, she ascends ; she stands upon the 
scaffold ; she listens respectfully to the admonition of 
the clergy ; she bears bravely the gaze of the crowd, 
and only once she shrinks. She sees, as she looks 
into that crowd, the pallid face of an elderly and de- 
formed man. He is her husband : he had staid be- 
hind in Europe ; and, thus exposed, she saw him in a 
strange land for the first time. The moment passed. 
There was yet another soul present, bound to the spirit 
of the woman by a stronger and a darker interest. 

The woman here exposed is a sinner ; but she has 
sinned after the manner of woman, and even in sin 
appears a whole woman in weakness and in strength. 
The meanness and degradation which man displays in 
his transgression is often in strange contrast with the 
firmness, even grandeur, which woman sometimes 
shows in hers. The deeper crimes of man come from 
his passions and his appetites ; the most greivous sins 
of woman are frequently from her heart. Thus, while 
guilt in man is selfishness, guilt in woman may be 



74 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

sacrifice. While it bears down man to cowardly deg- 
radation, it may display in woman some of her most 
heroic qualities. Even, as in this instance, with a love 
sincere, though unhappy and unblessed, she can still 
be faithful to the last and strong as a martyr. She 
will bear all tortures and all shames, and no power can 
wring out the secret which she has locked within her 
heart. In the faith which will endure disgrace, and 
endure it in a solitary silence, w^oman has ever proved 
her superiority to man. This attribute in the moral 
being of woman our author finely brings out in the 
whole character of Hester, but especially in her con- 
duct on the pillory. 

Among other magnates of the colony two clergymen 
are present. One is the grave and elderly Mr. Wil- 
son — a man of much experience, quiet in his preach- 
ing and sober in his godliness. The other is Mr. 
Dimmesdale — young, handsome, and a man of genius ; 
a man distinguished, in general repute, for a piety to 
which good men grown hoary in the service of God 
did homage ; a man of matchless eloquence, uniting, 
as it seemed, a seraph's zeal to a prophet's speech. 
This is the man that is called on to exhort Hester to 
make confession as to who is the partner of her sin. 
The venerable Mr. Wilson has exhausted all his skill 
and failed. Regarding the persuasiveness of his 
younger colleague as not to be resisted, he urges the 
evidently unwilling priest to use this persuasiveness 
on the unyielding culprit. The youthful priest does 
pour out an impressive sermon : a sad sermon it is — 
a sermon sounding with the melancholy of despair. 
Sincere, it is yet ambiguous. Hester's ear might take 



THE SCARLET LETTER. 75 

it, and not falsely, as an exhortation to speak out ; but 
her woman's heart would feel it truly as an appeal to 
hold her peace. Hester does hold her peace. We 
can here easily see that her exhorter is at her mercy 
and that he is the companion of her guilt. She steps 
down from the stage of her exposure, to wear upon her 
bosom the scarlet letter until it shall burn into her 
flesh and blood, through heart and soul, and scorch all 
her moral and her living womanhood.; But, since the 
muse of JEschylus made men stand aghast by pictures 
of awe and sorrow, was ever a more tragic group than 
we have here presented to the imagination ? Here is 
the unconscious infant that shall never know a father ; 
here is the exposed mother, whose sin has all the pain 
of open shame for herself and the burden of conceal- 
ment for another, without any remorse for the man 
she has deserted, without any support from the man 
she has loved. And here are these two men, not 
revealed to each other or to the people, yet confronted 
spirit to spirit, and, by a sort of occult instinct, pres- 
ent mind to mind - — the one an unloved husband, 
the other his loved but wretched rival. What group 
more desolate was ever brought together ? 

This tragic power in the opening deepens in the 
progress of the story ; and passions, incidents, and per- 
sons are fraught with it to the end. We feel it in the 
oath of Hester to her husband, in that sad interview 
when she swears not to discover her relation to him ; 
we feel it in the anguish with which she beholds the 
malign influence that the wily and revengeful man ex- 
ercises on the priest, in whom he knows he has found 
his rival, in whom he secures his victim ; we feel it in 



76 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

that force of sorrow whicli, after years have fled, leads 
her to break up this companionship, and in the desper- 
ate efforts which she makes to arouse in her lover the 
courage and resolve of manhood. (There is a Grecian 
sublimity in the manner in which she meets and goes 
through her destiny. Year after year she lives soli- 
tary, yet not selfish ; unsocial, but not inhuman ; 
strong, but not ungentle. She works for her living, 
nurtures her child, and does besides aught she can of 
neighborly charity. She still wears the letter, but few 
attach the original significance to it ; nay, so conciliat- 
ing is patience, so powerful is the might of uncom- 
plaining endurance, that this letter, from a symbol of 
infamy, comes at last to stand for loving and honora- 
ble meanings. The child grows apace, and is a thing 
of dreamful beauty, an infant witchery, a mixture 
of the human and the unearthly, an incarnate loveli- 
ness, which we know not how to name, whether to 
call it an imbodied angel from the skies, or an im- 
bodied fairy from the woods. C The outcast woman 
wears her scarlet letter on her garment ; the tortured 
priest bears his, burning in his breast. The fire that 
is never quenched consumes him ; the worm that never 
dies devours him ; and the enemy that cannot forgive 
looks on and glories in his sufierings. They have ' 
done their work. They have worn out his life. The 
scarlet letter has done its work. Hester, reckless of 
a society which had so bruised her, would now quit it 
and take the priest along vdth her. There is, in this 
portion of this deep prose tragedy, great eloquence and 
a most profound searching into human passion, with 
dashes of poetic sunshine, the brighter for the gloom. 



THE SCARLET LETTER. 77 

The interview between Hester and Dimmesdale, after 
so many years of open shame on her side and so many of 
secret remorse on his, in the silent and secluded forest, 
is a scene of sorrow and joy and of inward human 
struggle, upon which we pondered in long reflection 
and with thoughtful admiration. It is a pregnant page 
out of the volume of humanity. Then, in contrast 
with these situations and persons so agitated with sad 
memories and excited passions, is the child at the 
brook, questioning its babble and giving the meaning 
of its own sweet fancies to the music of its ripple. 
But life must no more wrestle with remorse. The 
time has come for confession, and confession ends in 
death. While the minister temporarily meditates 
flight and has not yet resolved upon confession, — while 
his brain reels between desire and conviction, between 
earthly escape and spiritual martyrdom, — he is visited 
by a series of temptations — grotesque, strange, fas- 
cinating, illusive, terrible. Extraordinary as these 
are, every man has that in his experience which will 
convince him of their reality. * This is a great piece of ' 
psychological painting ; and so too, with a dramatic 
grandeur in addition, is the close of the minister's life. 
The people and the fathers of the people are assem- 
bled. It is election day. The preacher has pro- 
nounced a sermon which the council and the multitude 
throb under as a voice from heaven. The priest is on 
the pinnacle of fame for sanctity and genius. Hester 
Prynne stands near the pillory on which seven years 
before she was exposed. Throngs have left the church ; 
they are coming towards this scaffold. The preacher, 
pale and tottering, is among them. Here the minister 



78 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

stops : with Hester and her child he ascends the scaf- 
fold in the presence of the bewildered, the astonished, 
assembly. 

" ' People of New England,' cried he, with a voice 
that rose over them, high, solemn and majestic, — yet 
had always a tremor through it, and sometimes a shriek, 
struggling up out of a fathomless depth of remorse 
and woe, — ' ye that have loved me, ye that have 
deemed me holy, behold me here, the one sinner of 
the world ! At last — at last — I stand upon the 
spot where, seven years since, I should have stood ; 
here, mth this woman, whose arm, more than the little 
strength wherewith I have crept hither ward, sustains 
me at this dreadful moment from grovelling down 
upon my face ! Lo, the scarlet letter which Hester 
wears ! Ye have all shuddered at it. Wherever her 
walk hath been — wherever, so miserably burdened, 
she may have hoped to find repose — it hath cast a 
lurid gleam of awe and horrible repugnance round 
about her. But there stood one in the midst of you 
at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shud- 
dered.* 

" It seemed at this point as if the minister must 
leave the remainder of his secret undisclosed. But he 
fought back the bodily weakness — and, still more, 
the faintness of heart — that was striving for the 
mastery with him. He threw off all assistance, and 
stepped passionately forward a pace before the woman 
and the child. 

" ' It was on him ! ' he continued, with a kind of 
fierceness, so determined was he to speak out the 
whole. 'God's eye beheld it ! The angels were for- 



THE SCARLET LETTER. 79 

ever pointing at it ! The devil knew it well, and 
fretted it continually with the touch of his burning 
linger ! But he hid it cunningly from men, and walked 
among you with the mien of a spirit, mournful because 
so pure in a sinful world — and sad, because he missed 
his heavenly kindred ! Now, at the death hour, he 
stands up before you ! He bids you look again at 
Hester's scarlet letter ! He tells you, that, with all its 
mysterious horror, it is but the shadow of what he 
bears on his own breast ; and that even this, his own 
red stigma, is no more than the type of what has seared 
his inmost heart ! ' " 

Then, in a last and wild ''farewell," he expires. 

The leading characters are conceived, contrasted, 
and evolved, not with artistic skill only, but with an 
inlooking soul that has gone far down to the deep 
places of the human affections and to the mysteries of 
the human will. The several individualities are ad- 
mirably sustained. It would be no fair method of 
criticism to judge them as we would persons of like 
condition now ; for, though they belong to what we 
esteem the order of common life, their era is so remote 
from ours — not indeed by years, but in idea — 
as to render them mythical ; and, besides the dimness 
of tradition, there is the mystery about them of pe- 
culiar and solemn destinies. Their age is to ours in 
this country a sort of heroic age, and they are beings 
created to be distinctive even in their age. They are 
in the highest sense poetic beings, and to be estimated 
by poetic laws ; yet by such laws we do not take them 
from the real by regarding them as of the ideal ; for 
the ideal is the real, but separated from all that 



80 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

renders the actual local, temporary, and changeful; in 
fact, consists of those elements of the real which are 
permanent and universal. These beings are consistent 
with themselves ; and this is all that the rule by which 
they are to be estimated requires. In the world of art, 
in the world of imagination, they are complete and 
vital unities ; and this is their proper world. Hester 
is ever the strong soul, still only with the strength of 
a soul that has sinned. Superior in her nature, she 
lives only in the force of nature, and ascends not into 
that sphere of spiritual being in which to yield is 
to conquer, to bend is to aspire, to become lowly is 
to become exalted. She is not a Christian, but a 
stoic. The outward cannot conquer her ; but neither 
does she conquer the outward. She has not learned 
the divinity of Christian sorrow — the godliness of its 
source and the beauty of its manifestation. She is 
greater than her fellows ; not, however, by heavenly, 
but human energy. She is too noble for revenge. She 
does them good ; but it is not meekly done. She does 
them good, because good is the action of a grand spirit; 
and hers was a grand spirit. Though not evangelically 
benevolent, she could not be malevolent, vengeful, or 
malignant ; for that were to be base. She earns good 
opinion without caring for it ; and when she has worn 
out reproach she despises reconciliation. In taking 
her sin, and the odium, and the penalty of it on her 
own isolated, absolute individuality, we have an im- 
pressive example of mental and moral prowess. In 
bearing all the scorching and scathing shame of it on 
her own unsheltered bosom, without appeal, apology, 
excuse, or equivocation, we almost forget the crime in 



THE SCARLET LETTEK. 81 

the courage, and lose sight of the sinner in the heroine. 
She is not of those paltry creatures who will first have 
such enjoyment as sin affords and then expect to be 
petted for repenting — creatures who seem willing to 
put off their manhood, if they can evade retributive 
censure in the simulated incapacity of idiots or infants. 
But Hester was not of such. She would not charge 
her deed upon circumstance or others ; and, odious as 
that scarlet letter was, she could not put it off, if, in 
doing so, she must put off with it the moral majesty 
of her individual personality. 

Dimmesdale, too, whether considered as a psychologi- 
cal conception, or as an artistic creation, or as a moral 
agent, is a character in which we find evidence of a 
genius that seems to have elements in common with 
the apparently irreconcilable minds of Coleridge and 
of Crabbe. In one sense, it is a character not uncom- 
mon ; but the author, in opening to us the inward 
workings of it and the spirit of these workings, evinces 
a searching and sagacious intellect, acting in company 
with an imagination that is as keen in its questionings 
of actual life as it is original in its forms of ideal life. 
Dimmesdale is not a hypocrite ; for then it would be 
easy to paint him. He has committed sin, and conceals 
it. Still he is not false : he knows that he is not what 
he seems ; yet he does not deceive. He has genius 
which he would use rightly ; and yet he has not recti- 
tude. He has power : he would not apply his power to 
evil ends ; but still he is not a good man. He has 
fallen ; yet he is not a hardened, nor by habit a bad, 
man. He loves fame, reputation, glory, influence ; but 
he would give the universe for the one minute's courage 
6 



82 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

which would blast them all, strip him to the soul, and 
place him, a spiritual bankrupt and beggar, before the 
hooting multitude. -That moment it costs him years of 
agony to gain and his life to go through. There is 
deep moral import for us in this character. It is one 
to tax profound attention, and it merits the profound- 
est. It will not do to call such a man a hypocrite. It 
will not even do to say that he wanted courage ; for a 
man who had courage equal to the sacrifice which his 
trial demanded would not be a man who could be 
exposed to such a trial. Our remarks on character are 
often extremely inconsistent, and often we prove our- 
selves to be fools in our criticism of folly. There are 
instances when, by giving way to sudden passion, a 
man brings upon himself a measureless woe. Now, 
frequently, this is not so much the result of the deed 
itself as of the concealment of it and of the complica- 
tions which belong to the concealment. Why, we ask, 
was not a frank and free confession made ? Let us just 
think below the surface, and we shall discover that the 
coolness and the strength which would be equal to the 
confession would never be subject to the passion. 
There are actions which are morally contradictory, as 
there are terms which are logically contradictory ; and 
the latter do not more necessarily exclude each other 
than do the former. Dimmesdale is one of those mixed 
characters, which, as they are the hardest to judge in 
life, are also the hardest to imbody in literature. He 
is an example of those spiritual contrarieties which we 
should find in essence in the heart of every man that 
walks, could we see into it. In him, as poetry requires, 
they are intensified ; in substance they are of the stuff 



THE SCARLET LETTER. 83 

of common life ; it is only in degree that they are ideal 
and romantic. His being is a secret strife between ^ 
passion and principle ; between the power of convic- 
tion and feebleness of will ; between desire and devo- 
tion ; between the consciousness of being wrong and 
the longing to be right. "With all this there is an 
interior centre of moral imposition. Vanity abides in 
that centre. He lives in excitement and for effect ; and 
the illusion which deceives the world is not greater 
than that which deceives himself. 

Chillingworth is not a character that it is very pleas- 
ant to contemplate. He is, however, a character to 
excite thought and to afford instruction. His charac- 
ter, like the others, is depicted with a singular origi- 
nality. But he is disagreeable. Still, we find a. moral 
use in him ; and we do not see that, consistently with • 
the plot or spirit of the story, he could well be other 
than he is. Yet, however real or natural the fact may 
be, it is painful to behold, as we do in Chillingworth, 
worthy qualities changed into wicked ones ; to behold 
an honest, intelligent, earnest, and reflective student 
transformed by any injury to a mean, insidious, vin- 
dictive persecutor, a simulating and smiling villain, 
a deliberate and fiendish assassin, who turns his mind 
into spiritual passion by which to consume and to kill 
his victim. 

But, then, in what a wonder of contrast to this hate- 
ful and contemptible character is that of the enchant- 
ing little Pearl ! A true jewel she is, glistening and 
gleaming with sweet yet unsettled and uncertain lustre 
amidst all the darker fragments of the story ; a playful 
sprite, and yet sorrowful ; a cherub that seems to have 



84 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

lost its pathway out of heaven and found itself on 
earth, smiling with the sweetness of higher spheres, 
yet sombre also with the melancholy of this lower 
world. Nothing, perhaps, has more tested genius than 
to give the ideal of childhood. We have ^now before 
our minds the Mignone of Goethe, the Fenella of Scott, 
the Little Nell of Dickens ; but we think that Pearl 
takes hold of our last, almost strongest, aiFections by a 
wildness, a delicacy, an enchantment which none of 
them possess — which they certainly do not possess, 
as she does, in union with a weird, woodlike, sylvan 
witchery. 

We have been thus full in our outline of the plot 
and in our analysis of the characters, not that we 
would have our essay a substitute for the story, for 
we suppose that all our readers are already familiar 
with this extraordinary volume : we have chosen our 
method as the only one by which we could naturally 
and easily indicate the impressions which have been 
left upon our mind by a tale so original and peculiar. 
Differences of opinion there will be on the tendencies 
of it, but none as to its genius. Some might consider 
the moral influence doubtful in a few instances ; in 
others the purpose does not seem clear or well defined ; 
but in substance, and on the whole, any work which 
reveals, as this does, the deep places of our nature, 
which so lays bare the subtle concealments of con- 
science, and which so brings out the tragic results of 
passion, must, in its very sadness, solemnize, instruct, 
and purify us. 

We have not indulged in quotation; for in a story 
so thorough in its unity, so compact, and so condensed. 



THE SCARLET LETTER. 85 

we found but few passages that we could, without 
injury, displace. 

Our closing remarks must now be made. They 
must not be many, although there is no want of 
suggestiveneas in our text. Genius, working by its 
freedom in a work of art, has no formal moral for its 
end. The moral should be in the spirit of purity and^ 
power with which it acts. When a spirit of purity 
and power is in the man, no badness or baseness can 
be in the artist. You may draw fifty or five thousand 
moral influences from his work ; you may make fifty 
or Ryq thousand moral uses of his work ; your influ- 
ences and your uses may be right ; but not one of them 
may have been in Ms contemplation. He works with- 
in boundless nature ; and, in conformity with nature, 
power goes out from him through his creation with an 
infinity of suggestiveness and in an infinity of ways. 
The author does in the present instance faintly indi- 
cate a moral in the single word — "truthJ^ But the 
real moral of his story covers the entire of life ; any 
word which expressed a danger or duty of life would 
be but a part of the moral; the whole of it would 
require many words, significant of many dangers and 
many duties. But, as the author has chosen his word, 
we have no right to change it. We will only dwell 
on it in a few very general relations ; as, for example, 
in the relation of society to the individual ; in relation 
of the individual to society; and in relation of the 
individual to himself. 

Now, in the relation of society to the individual, the 
treatment by the community of Hester was void of" 
truth ; it was false ; it was bad. Rude society has 



86 ILLUSTBATIONS OF GENIUS. 

always the error of pushing ignominy to the utmost ; 
and we may doubt if any society is yet so instructed 
as to be entirely right and true in this matter. We 
would not destroy, nay, we would not weaken, the 
moral supervision of society ; we would npt strip from 
it the solemn right to rebuke and punish. The re- 
tributive action of society on the individual is a part 
of nature ; it is an extension of the instinct of self- 
preservation into the wider instinct of social preser- 
vation. Nor is this action without its individual 
moral use. Society becomes a mirror to conscience ; 
and in that mirror a man often, for the first time, 
beholds the true moral image of himself. Let so- 
ciety punish, even to death, if that must be ; let so- 
ciety expose, if exposure is necessary ; but there is a 
bound which society has no claim to cross ; there is a 
life which no criminal can forfeit — the life of his in- 
ward being, the very vitality of his soul, the last recess 
of self-respect. To intrude on this is worse than 
murder ; for it is an attempt to kill that which is the 
life of life, the last retreat of hope, the last shelter in 
which consciousness can fold itself and bear existence 
even for an hour. Every man has this while he re- 
mains a man : let him wholly lose it, and in the same 
instant he flings off life. Jesus Christ, who knew all 
that is in man, knew how deeply, how divinely, this is in 
him, and he revered it. He would not even look at the 
woman brought to him for judgment, but turned away 
as if he would write upon the ground : and thus, while 
savage sanctimoniousness would brand with a scarlet 
stain. He whom no one could accuse would not wound 
by a glance. Even the secret and silent punishment 



THE SCARLET LETTER. 87 

of God spares this thing in man; for, until remorse 
blackens to despair, it is that by which man ever finds 
in some part of his soul a drop of comfort. When 
society tries to corrupt this drop, or squeeze it out, 
then does society provoke man in his soul to hate it, 
to resist it as a tyrant, towards whom resistance is 
virtue. 

Society may go beyond its just jurisdiction ; but the 
individual reacts against the barbarism of society. 
When exposure has done all, it has done its worst ; 
when nothing is concealed, there is no more to fear ; 
and there can be but slight excitement to shame where 
there i^ no motive for gratitude. But when it is the 
individual that is false with society, he is feeble with 
himself. The sense of unfitness will perplex him ; 
and, while any moral sensibility is alive, the sense of 
untruth will torment him. If a scarlet letter is to be 
worn, it is greatly better that it should be stitched 
upon the garment, ay, even branded on the forehead, 
than that it should burn ever in the heart. Every 
man is pledged to society in the way of general hones- 
ty ; but some men are pledged additionally by the 
special relations of consecrated office. A judge may 
be tempted, and he is but human ; so may a priest ; 
but, until all sacred associations are taken from magis- 
tracy and priesthood, sin in judge or priest will ever 
appear darker than in other men. The argument will 
not hold which urges that duty is one ;> that it is the 
same in all men ; that it belongs to humanity, and not 
to office. The mere acceptance or assumption of an 
office is an open vow, a deliberate engagement ; and 
in the degree of the trust given in the office are the 



88 ILLIJSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

expectations formed of the man. Satisfy these out- 
wardly as a man may, while he is inwardly untrue he 
cannot be at peace, except his conscience die; then 
that would be intellectual as well as moral death. To 
a man mth any innate nobleness no humiliation can 
be deeper, no shame more scalding, than to know that 
his life is not a reality, that his position is but 
phenomenal, and that, while mistaken for a prophet, 
he is only an actor. To have any secret which involves 
such feelings is a killing thing. It complicates the 
spirit ; it confuses motive ; it deprives a man of 
inherent force ; because, in taking away his peace and 
his simplicity, it takes away his courage and his 
strength. However grand or energetic his efforts may 
be, they are but fitful and spasmodic ; they have no 
continuous life ; they are united to no fixed centre ; 
below the most rapturous applause there are the stun- 
ning whisperings of fear, and in the brightest noon of 
fame the inward eye will shape to itself the accusing 
spectre of remorse. The distinction of what is natural 
in morality from what is conventional gives no relief ; 
for, in all the permanent relations of society, the natu- 
ral and the conventional merge into the law of truth, 
and that is immutable and eternal. A man with any 
spiritual life in him only fears society because he has 
first condemned himself ; and no censure from without 
can fatally disturb him if it has not interpretation 
from within. " Thou art the man,'' says the lowly 
seer to the mighty king ; it was the voice in the heart 
of the king which gave import to the voice of the 
prophet and gave it terror. 

But though society can make no change nor even 



THE SCAKLET LETTER. 89 

conscience in aught that is dark, yet the best has need 
to watch and to be humble. We have all of us, 
potentially, the elements of every sin. That sin does 
not come into consciousness or commission may be a 
negation of trial, and not a triumph of virtue. Why 
should we not apply the great idea of our human iden- 
tity, our human oneness, to guilt as well as to good- 
ness ? To feel that the situation of the direst criminal 
was possible to any of us, seems to us truly as needful 
to justice as to mercy — a sure bond of genuine charity. 
And what right have we to claim kindred with the 
saint and exclude the sinner ? We are of common 
nature with them both ; we are brothers in humanity ; 
and we sanctify that humanity not less by pity towards 
the sinner than we do by aspiration towards the saint. 
But there is a class of sins of which society takes no 
cognizance, and of which a man is not quick to suspect 
himself. They are quiet sins ; but they may become 
very deadly. They are sins of the spirit. They are 
not turbulent ; but they cause often tempests of dis- 
tress. Sins of the carnal passions become soon odious 
to society ; but sins of the spirit — envy, vanity, bigot- 
ry, ambition — • remain unrebuked, or are insensible to 
rebuke. The sins of the outward passions begin in 
the senses, and are in their last stage and worst when 
they reach the soul. The sins of the inward passions 
begin in the soul, and are direct and immediate evil in 
the source of life. But their agency does not stop 
within the soul ; it goes far abroad ; and, if allied with 
intellectual energy, it becomes as much more fearful 
for evil in the world as thought is greater than appe- 
tite. We would speak here, however, only on the evil 



90 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

as it is in the individual himself. One such sin may 
work the most direful ruin in him ; it may corrupt 
him in the essence of his soul ; eat out of it every 
tolerant, every affectionate, disposition ; it may so de- 
ceive his faculties, so pervert his sentiments, that he 
minds not the inward wickedness that is in him, or 
the perdition to which he has come, until in some late 
and revolting revelation he finds himself incurably 
miserable in hating and being hated. In the Chil- 
lingworth of this story we have this moral fact im- 
pressed on us. A man of thought, and not originally 
of unkindly temper, he allows a fatal provocation to 
overmaster him ; he lets in the spirit of vengeance to 
his breast ; helps its growth by brooding meditation ; 
strengthens it, by exercise and habit, until victory 
brings him to despair ; until all the man within him 
dies and nothing but the fiend is living. " From envy, 
hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, good Lord 
deliver us ! " Than this there is no more needful and 
no more solemn petition within the compass of human 
supplication. 



FICTION. 

It would be a needless task in our day to prove 
that fiction may not in itself be wrong. An absolute 
condemnation of fiction would condemn every thing 
in which imaginative art has the least concern ; not 
prose romance alone, but also poetry, painting, and 
sculpture. The most literal portrait has an element 
of fiction in it. Indeed, so far as fiction has an il- 
lusive power, it has it from its connection with ac- 
tuality and truth. So far as fiction is symbolical 
and representative, it has accordance with the greatest 
portion of our experience. We live amidst phenom- 
ena and appearances, and the realities that lie behind 
them mock the most strenuous efforts of our reason. 
Truth lies in signs even to the most exact thinkers — 
by diagrams and formula they climb to the heights of 
heaven, and guide themselves through infinity amidst 
labyrinths of stars. Thus they penetrate the mysteries 
of nature ; and thus, when they have found their 
meaning, they reveal it. And, when God himself 
would speak with man, it is by analogy and allegory 
that he opens such glimpses of eternal verity as the 
dim sight of humanity can bear. Not only are para- 
bles imaginative ; the texture of religious speech, 
generally, must of necessity be so. If thought, at the 

(91) 



92 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIITS. 

best, is but a sign; if life itself is the stuff which 
dreams are made of; if it be a dream rounded by a 
little sleep ; if in it we see but as in a glass darkly, 
and it doth not yet appear what we shall be ; if, more- 
over, it is indeed as a tale, and quickly becomes a tale that 
is told, — men then act but on the simplest promptings 
when they copy it in phantasies which they shape for 
themselves, when they coin memories of their own 
experience, when they depict with exaggeration the 
sadness and the queerness that vary their existence, 
when here in the childhood of their being they take 
pleasure, as children do, in curiosity and wonder, in 
turning realities into stories and stories into realities. 
But, like every other thing in the world, man can 
abuse this propensity, and does abuse it. First it is 
abused by numbers who write fiction. There are 
works, frequently of commanding genius, which enter 
'profoundly into man and take a wide survey of the 
world, but it is ever in darkness and discontent ; and 
in result they do nothing but to increase them. They 
assume a serious and philosophic form ; some of them 
are written in a fascinating eloquence ; they are intent 
with passion ; and the general result on the mind, after 
perusal, is a union of intoxication with depression. 
But, eloquent and poetic as they are, their substance 
is that of exalted sensualism — associated as such 
sensualism ever is with a concentrative egotism. The 
main interest commonly turns on individual misery ; 
and commonly this misery is a contradiction to indi- 
vidual desire. Desire is raised from the low station 
which the moral reason gives it to a dangerous aris- 
tocracy in which the sensual imagination rules. Na- 



FICTION. 93 

ture stands for law, inclination stands for virtue ; so 
tliat to draw out a scheme of life in conformity with 
such dictates would be to reverse the phraseology of 
the Decalogue. Our old novelists are in many things 
condemnable, and in nothing more than in their gross- 
ness. But they never tampered with the radical con- 
victions upon which individual and social morals rest. 
In general they were careless persons — men of the 
world, and men who aimed only to give the world as 
they saw it. They drew characters as they were ; they 
used them because they were suitable to amuse the 
reader, to advance the action of the story ; and giving 
no promise for their integrity, offering no bail for their 
good behavior, they dismissed them to their fate, to 
make their way in the community as well as they were 
able. They were no reasoners, no speculators ; and, 
where one of them composed a narrative that enchained 
the attention of his readers, he achieved all that he 
proposed. 

Another class of fictions is entirely of modern growth. 
These fictions literally riot in debasement, in moral 
and physical corruption. "Will it be said that vices in 
romance do not within any measurable degrees come 
near to vices in reality? But this is no true reason 
for reproducing them in art. Further, it may be said 
that, as vices and sufferings are in life and nature, it 
is serving the cause of humanity to show them forth 
in literature. I would have nothing excluded from 
literature ; the most tragic, the most comic, elements 
should abound in it ; but they should be duly mingled. 
Neither would I have any condition of social grade 
excluded ; nor, indeed, is any ever excluded by novel- 



94 ILLTJSTEATIONS OP GENIUS. 

ists of the highest order. Genius in the finest writers 
of fiction has crowded its world from the humbler 
walks of existence. Who are those with whom Cer- 
vantes is most at home ? Goatherds, peasants, bar- 
bers, innkeepers, carriers. Whom does Goldsmith 
bring before us ? The inmates of a country parsonage, 
rustics, and the rabble of a jail. Scott I need not 
mention ; for to enumerate the characters of his ro- 
mances would be to survey the whole scope of civiliza- 
tion. In such works we may learn of humanity from 
a most wonderful wisdom ; but to seek for knowledge 
in some modern stories that profess to reveal the 
mysteries of sin and sorrow would be as vain a 
task as to go to asylums of insanity for specimens 
of prudence, or to jails for examples of honesty — as 
vain a task as to study finance in the tale of Aladdin, 
or to learn geography in Gulliver's Travels. Let 
me mention two writers, not in English, who show 
how lowly personages may be combined with transpar- 
ent purity of sentiment, with the utmost prodigality 
of imagination. One of these is the Italian, Manzoni. 
His Betrothed is a narrative of humble life, and is 
filled with the brightest riches of the heart. It has 
variety of character and incident, without bustle or 
confusion ; it throbs -svith emotion, but avoids extrava- 
gance ; it pictures domestic sorrows of the most afflict- 
ing kind and public calamities the most terrific ; but 
in both it " oversteps not the modesty of nature," and 
never violates simplicity or truth. It depicts fondness 
and tenderness without being mawkish ; it shows the 
ghastly vision of a plague without being disgusting ; 
and to the minuteness of Defoe it unites the imagina- 



MICTION. 95 

tion of Boccaccio. The incidents are not only beautiful, 
but probable. Nearly all of them might have occurred 
in an ordinary life. The characters are consistent both 
in outline and detail. Peasants speak and act as peas- 
ants ; barons speak and act as barons. The spirit of 
the story is as profound as it is spotless. It breathes a 
religious eloquence which has nothing that surpasses 
it, and, except in Fenelon, nothing that equals it. 

The other to whom I have referred is the German, 
Richter. If we had not a preeminent example in the 
overflowing comicry of Don Quixote to prove that 
the quaintest humor, the slyest drollery, the most gro- 
tesque extravagance may consist with the most unsul- 
lied thoughts, we might point to the stories of Richter. 
These stories of Richter are mostly domestic. Their 
especial charm lies in sentiment. This is rich to large 
abundance ; joining the familiar to the curious, the 
simple to the wild ; the odd rising to the sublime, the 
sublime merging in the odd ; the queer going hand in 
hand with the beautiful ; the beautiful gyrating through 
mazes of eccentricity ; the comic in the midst of mis- 
eries ; misery girding the comic with a sombre bound- 
ary ; painful struggles tinted with smiles ; moments of 
joy snatched from depths of wretchedness ; battlements 
of calamity lit up with beamings of glory from the 
soul ; agony choking down its pain and giving place 
to bursts of childlike laughter ; common events exalted 
to the grandest poetry or made suggestive of pro- 
foundest reflection ; illustrations gathered from every 
art, every science, every department of scholarship, 
every region of the universe ; the whole of such 
strange compound finding unity, identity, and life in 



96 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

an unbroken inspiration of humanity and heaven. It 
would take a Rabelais, a Sterne, a Mackenzie, a Rich- 
ardson, a Shelley, all melted into a single incarnation, 
to form a genius resembling that of Richter ; and yet 
all of them together could not give us Jean Paul in 
the sweep of his fancy, the fulness of his love, and the 
depth of his power. 

This desire for fiction is again abused on the part of 
readers. It is abused by excess. It is not the loss of 
time that it occasions ; it is the false and the undue 
excitement which it indulges that is the most to be 
deplored. The world of dreams in which it constantly 
somnambulizes brings it, in two ways, into conflict with 
the world of duties. First, it is a conflict with hard 
requirement, in which enthusiasm has to bufiet with 
literal obligation. Second, it is a conflict of extraor- 
dinary emotion against the regularity of settled laws. 
This collision between fact and fancy does, of neces- 
sity, sear the temper ; it irritates the spirit ; it causes 
the sphere of positive demands to assume an appear- 
ance melancholy, monotonous, and penal. We lose, 
then, the best enjoyment which fiction itself can give 
by divesting its perusal of novelty and by reducing it 
to a habit. We miss, too, the joys which are most 
worthy of rational existence — the joy which comes out 
from the exercise of our best powers; the joy of ear- 
nest purpose; the joy of independent meditation; the 
joy of grappling athletically with the various problems 
that are involved with all our relations to the universe ; 
the joy, in fact, of feeling that we labor and that we 
live. Readers likewise abuse fiction when they go to 
it for positive knowledge ; for, even if it could dispense 



FICTION. 97 

ynth. labor in instruction, if it could fully communi- 
cate philosophy without taxing thought, it would do it 
all to our disadvantage. The method, the discipline, 
the patience, the struggle of our faculties, the progress 
of research, enlarged discernment, enlarged tolerance, 
the formation of reflective habits, the growth of moral 
wisdom, — these are more important, far, than any 
amount of mere intellectual acquisition. It is not 
merely the fable of the husbandman's legacy to his 
sons realized : it is better ; for, while we enrich the 
soil by cultivation, we also find the treasure. 

I say nothing of kinds of fiction that ought nei- 
ther to be written nor read, I refer to mental re- 
sults more than to moral ones ; to the danger of in- 
jury to truth and simplicity of feeling more than harm 
to its purity ; to the disorder of intellectual health 
rather than the dislocation of the spiritual principles. 
The moral and the spiritual are, I grant, more impor- 
tant than the intellectual ; but this is so readily appre- 
hended that there is no need to dwell upon it. Besides, 
I have in these remarks concern only with an excess in 
degree, and not an evil in essence. Constant indul- 
gence in fiction weakens both mind and motive; it 
incapacitates the one for thought and the other for 
action; it surrounds the life of its victim with an 
atmosphere of unreality, and it puts within it a foun- 
tain of uneasy desire. Thence arises a general discon- 
tent ; not that sort of discontent with things as they 
are, which, urging us to make them better, is an essen- 
tial of improvement, but that vain discontent with 
things inevitable which flies for relief to a vague 
idealism that only deepens the malady. Useful and 
7 



98 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

so"ber studies are not simply neglected ; they are 
loathed. The excessive novel reading, besides taking 
from us a relish for simple pleasures, a keen, clear dis- 
cernment of human beings and human circumstances 
as they are in the world which God has made and 
which his wisdom rules, takes from us the inclination 
to commune with outward nature — deprives us of the 
power to appreciate it. With heated blood and dizzy 
brain, worn from loss of sleep and depressed from 
long excitement, outward objects yield none of their 
true influences to our perverted feelings and our disor- 
dered senses. We get so habituated to the landscapes 
of romances that in these only we luxuriate ; and we 
turn from the actual creation to rejoice in a fanciful one. 
We wait till the shutters are closed to find a summer's 
dawn blushing beautifully on paper ; and half asleep 
near a smoking lamp at midnight we have in the same 
way a resplendent sunset on the mountains. This is 
not alone to take creation and humanity at second 
hand ; it is to exist in a medium which is artificial as 
well as \isionary ; to quit the fair earth and the open 
sky for overheated pictures ; to look at character, not 
in spontaneous movement, but in curious contrivance ; 
to study social manners, not by direct observation, but 
in exaggerated description ; it is, in fact, to exclude 
from the mind original impressions, and to cram it in 
their stead with the vagaries of imagination. 

Much more might be said ; but space permits not. 
Having thus regarded fiction on the side of its evils, 
we are now to regard it on the side of its uses. 
But from this point of view I shall generally have be- 
fore my mind fiction the purest and the highest. The 



FICTION. 99 

utility of fiction does not consist in tangible benefit ; 
it is coincident with tbe inspiration which any work 
contains and communicates. A great story teller acts 
on many faculties ; and, therefore, within himself he 
combines a vast capacity of agencies. Equally analytic 
as creative, not dependent on the instinct of genius 
alone, but matured by reflective thought, and rich in 
knowledge with the spoils of time, he is painter, ar- 
chitect, dramatist, critic, satirist, geographer, naturalist, 
antiquary, historian, politician, metaphysician, and 
moralist — not in technical systems and disquisitions, 
but in the concrete vitality of human action and of 
human character. The utility of fiction is, therefore, to 
be traced in the wholeness of its power. The advan- 
tage derived from the highest kind of fiction is analo- 
gous to the advantage derived from the highest kind 
of drama. Neither aims to put the mind in a specific 
attitude, neither to urge it in a specific direction ; but 
both tend to enlarge, to soothe, to humanize it. When 
we study Lear or Macbeth, no distinctive intel- 
lectual or moral purpose is obtruded on us ; but com- 
pass, and force, and insight are given to our intellect- 
ual and moral being. In like manner, the benefit 
received from the perusal of Ivanhoe or Old Mor- 
tality is in the order and degree of inspiration which 
they contain or can communicate. The higher fiction, 
like the higher drama, acts through emotion and imagi- 
nation — sometimes one, sometimes the other ; but 
most completely when both combine and form a unity. 
Give this unity a name, and it is what we call sympa- 
thy — one is imperfect without the other. Emotion 



100 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

without imagination is narrow and timid sensibility. 
Imagination without emotion is cold, brilliant, and 
constructive. Emotion at the best will give us only- 
sentiment — imagination will give us only wit or inci- 
dent ; bring them together, and we have pathos and 
humor, drollery and tragedy, character and story. 
Passive sympathy in the reader corresponds with 
active sympathy in the author ; the active sympathy of 
the author comes forth in living realities ; passive sym- 
pathy in the reader enters into and understands them. 
Fiction here presents itself to us as an agency in 
one very elevated order of culture — culture through 
sympathy. This kind of culture has occasionally an 
excellent intellectual use. Some of the most obscure 
workings of the mind have been best revealed in the 
imbodied life of romance, and, by means of incident 
and feeling, made actual before us in the vivid person- 
ality of deed and passion. Abstract problems are 
thus incarnated into forms of character ; and, though 
the problems may not be solved, they are at least ren- 
dered more intelligible. What arrangement of mere 
logical method, what refinement of analysis, could, for 
instance, as the story of Caleb Williams does, so lay 
bare to us the structure of a peculiar mind, or so 
trace the influence of peculiar circumstances ? What 
inferences from analogy, reasoned out in hard phi- 
losophy, could make us feel the misery of surviving 
all with whom our life was first associated as it is 
impressed on us in the dreary loneliness of St. Leon ? 
With what terrible reality we behold the perdition, 
which mere intelligence must endure mthout human 



FICTION-. 101 

kindred and social affinities, in the wild, the most 
eloquent, story of Frankenstein ! And where have 
metaphysics ever sounded such depths in the abysses 
of dark thought as have been explored in the dramatic 
romance of the Faust ? Such works do not alone in- 
terest us in the mysteries of our nature, but they also 
charm us with the richest variety of event and elo- 
quence. 

I will not say that romance can teach history, neither 
will I enter into the discussion as to whether historical 
studies have been improved or injured by the historical 
novel ; but certainly through this medium millions 
of men and women have obtained living images of past 
ages which they would not have sought or found in 
other writings. Romance cannot teach history, nor 
should it be taken even as historical interpretation ; 
and yet it can help us to understand history. We 
understand history as we understand man. It is as we 
can grasp the everlasting realities of his nature that 
we can comprehend him, into whatever shape the 
mould of custom or of time may cast him. Outward 
changes of eras and of empires can be recorded in 
chronicles ; it is sympathy alone that reaches down to 
the spirit of that eternal humanity which underlies 
them. Fiction does much to excite and to enlarge 
this sympathy. An age lives to us again ; and they 
who were buried in it as in a grave come forth at 
the wizard's invocation, giving us, not the story, but 
the very being of their day. The past is made the 
present. It is around us ; and the world which once it 
owned ceases to be overthrown with fragments of its 
sepulchres. It rejoices and is glad to be with its 



102 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GEXIUS. 

myriads in the sun again, to revisit the glimpses of the 
moon, to smell the air in which ere now it lived, to 
tread npon the earth which aforetime it had ruled. 
We, too, rejoice and are glad to look upon its living 
face and to listen to its living voice. Thus, by the 
enchanter's power, the select of generations become 
our well-known acquaintances, our familiar friends ; 
their names are household words ; and great eras and 
mighty times seem but a portion of our own auto- 
biography. The distant is made near. With the red 
man or the dark we communicate as with our neigh- 
bor ; summoned from every corner of the earth, clad 
in every costume. Members of our race throng around 
our fireside, tell us there strange stories of their hearts, 
and lay before us the working of their thoughts. Man 
of the distant and the past, brought thus present to us, 
brought thus near to us, we recognize at once to be 
our brother, and as such we clasp him ; we see the 
movements of his features ; we feel the throbbing of 
his bosom; we are brought within the play of his 
passions ; we are glad or sorry, angry or pitiful, in the 
varyings of his condition ; he is our friend or enemy, 
our sovereign or slave ; we have shame in him or 
pride ; we blush for him or claim praise ; we weep in 
his afflictions, we burn against his sins ; he is no 
longer a shadow with a name ; he is a substance with 
a soul. 

Such culture must have much of moral usefulness. 
It does not stop in making us acquainted with an 
abstract humanity, but emiches those generous chari- 
ties and affections that bind us to individual men. All 
those novels, therefore, which deal in personal scandal 



FICTION. 103 

and polemical dispute are as abominable to ethics as 
they are to art. Fiction which is alive with the spirit 
of true genius, out of its own fulness pours an abundant 
love. Near and afar off humanity is dear to it, and 
nothing so execrable to it as anti-social or misan- 
thropic feelings. To bring the mind not only into 
nearer, but into kindlier, contact with humanity is the 
best office of genius. Shakspeare's creations, above 
all, have this influence. They have this influence in 
their comic power ; but, with a deeper force, they 
have it ever in their tragic workings. Trace the 
poet through his most awful wanderings, through the 
subtleties of temptation, the cunning of desire, the 
sophistries of delusion, the gradations of passion, the 
crooked ways of envy, the steep ones of ambition, 
the patience of revenge, tha pangs of jealousy, the 
moodiness of despair, the agony of remorse, — trace 
liim through the doubts of reason, the hesitancy of 
conscience, to the mysteries and conjectures which lie 
along the bourn whence no traveller returns, — we 
feel more powerfully as we advance the sense of our 
humanity ; by the great capacities which he stirs with- 
in us, we feel kindred with the highest ; by those 
low monitions of conscience which warn us that the 
blackest guilt he paints might have been our own, 
we feel brotherhood with the worst. Art for its 
own sake must present humanity to us complacent- 
ly ; and genius, of its own free will, does what art 
requires. Observe the magic with which genius weds 
goodness even to weakness or insanity. Who is not 
made gentle by the zeal of Dr.- Primrose for Mo- 
nogamy, the ardor of Captain Shandy in recounting 



104 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

the siege of Namur, and the devotion of old Monk- 
barns to antiquarianism ? "Who is not warmed with 
friendliness to his nature as he listens to the valiant 
and most gentle knight, Don Quixote, rejoicing in his 
prowess only that he may defend the weak, desiring to 
exalt himself that he may confer benefits on his friends, 
and especially his poor Sancho Panza ? We share the 
cordiality of Sancho when he exclaims, " Lord bless 
thee for a master ! " " Who would believe that one 
who can say so many good things should tell such 
nonsense and riddles about Montesino's Cave ? " 

But fiction as a mere enjoyment, within its proper 
limits, has important usefulness. It is often desira- 
ble, and for our good, to be taken from ourselves, 
to be delivered for a while from our cares, to live 
amidst scenery and passions more enchanting and 
absorbing than any which experience or the actual 
world gives us. It is not only allowable, but beneficial, 
occasionally to lay aside toil of the head as well as of 
the hand, and to seek for change, if not for relax- 
ation, in the excitement of the feelings and imagi- 
nation ; to pass from the sphere of the workday 
realities which have fatigued or vexed us to find relief 
in the wide domains of the ideal. There are times, 
too, when we are utterly disqualified for labor either 
active or sedentary. There are states both of body 
and of spirit that go before illness, or that illness 
leaves, in which we are void of power and even of will. 
The beguiling of attention from our infirmities in these 
circumstances ; the replacing of a painful conscious- 
ness by a pleasurable one ; the filling ^up of time 
which would otherwise be vacant or distressing with 



FICTION. 105 

delightful interests, is more than a present solace ; it 
is curative ; it tempers sickness and accelerates the 
return of health. Fiction becomes then a physician 
and a friend. 

In its due relations and degrees fiction has some 
peculiar advantages as an amusement. It is intel- 
lectual. It acts upon the mind, and, within the mind's 
own region, provides enjoyment. It is artistical. It 
is artistical to the reader as well as to the writer, so 
that fiction affords critical excitement as well as 
emotional delight. When in the perusal of a story we 
have revelled in pleasure that we did not care to ana- 
lyze, which we could not wait to examine, our satis- 
faction is not less at the end, when memory and 
reflection enter on the task of reproduction. It is 
indeed a new and added pleasure when judgment 
traces the admirable skill which was exercised to pro- 
duce eftects so illusive and impressive, effects that were 
first a spell upon our fancy, and then a problem to our 
reason. Other artists the unprofessional can know in 
their effects alone. Their methods and contrivances 
the uninstructed cannot know ; and how means in 
them are related to ends the uninstructed have no 
capacity to judge. But, in fiction, every man has the 
witness in himself; he is at once the instrument upon 
which the master plays and a critic of the player. 
Music is, of all arts, the most intense in its effects ; 
but the principles which guide the composer, and the 
manner in which he applies them, are almost as remote 
fronj. the common mind as the mysteries of creation. 
Fiction, also, is accessible to the mass of mankind. It 
is, no doubt, a most exalted pleasure to look upon a 



106 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

noble piece of sculpture. The most rugged casts of 
tlie Elgin marbles fill the mind with gratified astonish- 
ment ; nearer to life and less sublime is the joy 
derived from painting ; and even in a common print 
the Last Supper shines forth divinely in the light of 
religion and beauty. More absorbing than any and 
than all is music ; and he who has heard its highest 
strains has memories to last for life. Still, these arts 
in their full excellence have many limitations ; they 
are not capable of a boundless diffusion in their indi- 
vidual results. The statue must stay fixed on its 
pedestal ; the picture must remain in its gallery ; 
and music, for its finest performance, demands talent 
which is rare, and which, like all rare things, is ex- 
pensive. Fiction you can have always and you can 
have it every where. You need no mediator between 
it and your own mind. It is not shut out from the eye ; 
you have but to open the volume and its meaning is 
revealed ; it is not dead or silent to the ear, waiting the 
enchanter to come and call it into life and power ; the 
witchery is at your own command, and the spirits that 
you would have pass before you are ready at your own 
invocation. You can lose yourself in its delectations 
in your chamber or chimney corner, in the midst of 
solitude or the midst of men, in the garden bower or 
the forest nook, in the thronged hotel or in the crowded 
steamboat ; and, without other medium than the print- 
ed page, the author's mind and your own are in full 
communion. I have said nothing on the universe of 
idealism into which fiction transports the mind — a 
universe that fiction has called into being, and which 
will hold its being while the actual fails to satisfy and 



FICTIOJS^. 107 

while fancy tires of experience. There is no knight 
that ever strode a horse more fixed in thought than he 
that managed Rosinante ; and there is no bailie that 
enters the town council of Glasgow more distinctly- 
visible to his fellows than is Bailie Nichol Jarvie to 
the fancy ; and these are but two inhabitants of those 
immortal and unfading regions which constitute the 
charmed realms of romance. 

" Blessings," says Sancho, " on the man that first in- 
vented sleep — it comes round one like a cloak, and 
covers him all over." Blessings, I say, on the man 
that invented fiction. It is a cloak that shuts out many 
a blast of trouble and annoyance ; and when a man 
wraps it well about him on a winter's night, provided 
conscience and the household are at peace, he minds 
the storm as little as jolly Tarn O'Shanter. Blessings 
on all genuine story tellers. Blessings on all singers 
too. Blessings on old Homer, that sang of Troy di- 
vine, leaving a beginning and a model for all who 
should sing forever. Blessings on the brave old 
scalds who chanted praises to the storm gods ; who, 
in high, impassioned measure, celebrated the warriors 
of the mountains and the monarchs of the sea. Bless- 
ings on bard, minstrel, troubadour, who gave refine- 
ment to courage and grace to might ; who, in chieftain's 
hall and lady's bower, tempered with humanity the 
force of manhood and softened with gentleness the 
pride of beauty. Blessings on the sweet, bold ballad 
singers, prophets of the people's heart, poets of their 
fancy, lyrists of the wild and free, of baron and of 
boor, of woodcraft and knighthood, inmates of hut 
and palace, comical and sad in every mood of nature. 



108 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

But once more I say, Blessings on the story tellers. 
Blessings on those of the legend-filled and wonder- 
trodden East, greater themselves than the magicians 
whom they celebrated, richer and more potent than 
the sovereigns of the genii — glorious necromancers, 
nameless, invisible, whose conjurings are an ever- 
lasting childhood, in which humanity has without 
decay the choicest, the brightest, imaginings of its 
youth. Blessings on those wild romancers, mighty 
alike in their fancies and their faith, who gave the 
tales of chivalry to men as believing as themselves ; 
who surrounded the names of their heroes with asso- 
ciations of bravery and adventure that were not un- 
fruitful in generous influences on character and life. 
Blessings manifold upon Cervantes that he sent out 
among men throughout all time, under grotesque ap- 
pearance, two of the most lovable emanations that ever 
came forth at the call of genius, that ever swelled the 
heart with admiration, that ever shook the sides with 
laughter — the one the impersonation of wild enthusi- 
asm, the other of happiest mirth. Long live Don 
Quixote ; long live Sancho. If they have beaten all 
other knights and squires from the world, it is because 
they contain within themselves the best qualities of all 
other knights and squires put together. Blessings on 
those in our own literature who have not only enlarged 
the domain of the ideal, but introduced to its commu- 
nity some of its worthiest members ; who have adorned 
it with such citizens as Christian the pilgrim and 
Crusoe the adventurer ; with Dr. Primrose, Parson 
Adams, Uncle Toby, and a multitude besides. Bless- 
ings on those in our own day who call new inhabitants 



FICTION. 109 

into this empire with whom it is pleasant as well as 
profitable to be acquainted, who, while they minister 
to innocent gayety, improve the heart. 

In conclusion, I mention the name which crowns the 
whole — that of Walter Scott. Epic, scald, minstrel, 
ballad singer, — he was all in one ; and yet, besides, he 
was the greatest of story tellers. In the range of his 
subjects he seemed bound to no locality, limited to no 
special time, intimate with the various grades, and 
conditions, and manners of mankind. It was as if the 
soul of the Wandering Jew, pardoned and baptized 
with genius, had transmigrated into a new body, com- 
missioned to write stories of the many ages and the 
climes in which it had ever lived. It was as if, carrying 
the wisdom of its miraculous experience into its regen- 
erated youth, it threw over the past the freshness of its 
new morning, as if it put forth the fire of rekindled 
blood into its older thoughts, then fainted into heaven, 
while men were yet spellbound to these records in joy- 
ful wonder and in passionate delight. This comparison, 
however, holds good for Scott but in one relation — 
the range and variety of the world which he painted. 
In nought but this was there any thing in him of the 
wizard. Familiar as his genius was with the core of 
olden times, no man was more cordially of his own. 
He was friendly with his age ; he was friendly with 
his neighbors. We can come near to his private 
habits ; and we delight to know the man in the dis- 
tinctiveness of his personality to whom we owe so 
much. Many, and marvellous, and odd, and joyous, 
and deep, and beautiful are the characters with which 
he has surrounded himself; but he is not lost among 



110 ILLUSTEATIOISTS OF GENIUS. 

them ; and, exhilarating as the pleasure is that such 
a goodly company bestows, we see it in a warmer lus- 
tre when we see it in the beamings of its master's face. 
Brave, kindly, homebred, and hearty, he does not repel 
our affections. We take pride in the greatness of one 
so near to us ; and we delight to observe that one who 
could so easily call multitudes from the vasty deep of 
his most plastic mind loved to be in genial intercourse 
with flesh-and-blood companions. And our intima- 
cy with Scott is, if possible, rendered closer by the 
single weakness which he paid for by years of sorrow 
and with his life. He built a castle ; but he broke his 
heart. Even family he has left none. But he has left 
that which nothing can take from him except that 
which sweeps letters from the earth — a fame which 
lives in all that is lovable — a fame which gathers its 
applause from the grateful friendship of civilized gen- 
erations. The consolation that he has ministered to 
desponding spirits ; the cheerfulness with which he has 
banished care ; the mirth with which he has laughed 
away sadness ; the tragic grandeur by which he has 
drowned individual sorrow ; the stirring events by 
which he has shaken the torpor of indolence ; the 
gentle, the gay, the heroic, the humane emotions 
with which he has agitated so many souls, — these are 
things which are deathless and which are priceless. 
There is no standard of exchange by which the gifts 
of genius can be balanced with the goods of earth ; 
and though such goods should attend on genius in 
every variety that men desire, they could never be 
taken for its wages or its equivalent. No temporal 
station could have added to Scott's dignity; and all 



FICTION. Ill 

factitious contrivances for posthumous importance, if 
perfectly successful, would have been nullified by the 
compass of his true immortality. His name is to us 
above the proudest of the Pharaohs ; and we would 
not give the least of his romances for the greatest of 
the Pyramids. 



PUBLIC OPINION. 

In a mere cursory essay, no complete disquisition, 
of course, can be attempted of so vast a subject ; and 
tbis presumes to be no complete disquisition, but 
merely the attempt of a single mind to give its own 
impressions in its own way. I sball first discuss the 
general subject, and then some of its relations to the 
age in which we are living. 

Opinion is one of those words which all persons 
understand, but which it is difiicult to define. It does 
not imply a state of mind amounting to absolute con- 
viction ; and the proposition which merely declares our 
opinion is never considered as undisputed or indispu- 
table. An assertion which excludes doubt or the 
possibility of doubt, whatever order or kind of afiirma- 
tion it may belong to, cannot be classed as an opinion. 
But opinion seldom stands for a mere abstract state- 
ment ; it is generally associated with some strong 
feeling ; thence the tenacity with which men hold their 
opinions, the passions with which they urge them, and 
the fury with which they combat for them ; thence it 
is that they combine so much intensity with variable- 
ness and so much tyranny Avith evanescence : the 
feeling and the opinion depend mutually one upon the 
other, and one without the other is nothing. A refuted 

(112) 



PUBLIC OPINION. 113 

opinion is death to the feeling ; a worn out feeling is 
death to the opinion. Most of human contests have 
their origin in opinions, not in convictions ; most 
of the hatred, the malice, and all uncharitableness 
that disturb society is about opinions, not about prin- 
ciples. 

Public opinion is not always in the right, and its 
power is no just measure of its rectitude. I will dwell 
for a little on this point ; and to avoid all that might 
possibly seem to be invidious, and likewise as more 
suited to the spirit of deliberate discussion, my illus- 
trations shall be drawn from the past, and not from the 
topics of our own day. 

Public opinion is not an infallible test of truth or 
right, even when it has combined in its favor all the 
circumstances that usually act with greatest force upon 
the popular judgment. The prevalence at various peri- 
ods of wrong, absurdity, falsehood, and cruelty, it would 
be suiFicient for our purpose simply to indicate; but 
we will bring forward an instance which concentrates 
the Avhole principle within a single case, which presents 
to our view the public judgment in a most perverted 
condition, while all that gives not only the most awful 
strength, but the most venerable sanction, to opinion is 
on the side of that perversion. For what, let me ask, 
are the circumstances that give the greatest power as 
well as the most venerable sanction to opinion ? The 
authority of numhers, the authority of great names^ 
the authority of time. Take the case, then, of witch- 
craft. It was once fully sustained by this threefold 
authority ; and yet now men would laugh to scorn a 
pretension to it ; and that for which they once made the 
8 



114 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

heavens red with, human flames and the air groan with 
human agonies, if asserted now, they would not deem 
as worthy a contradiction. There is something in this 
case so peculiar as to entitle it to more than passing 
mention. Let us for a while consider it. Popular 
excitement against witchcraft is of no remote occur- 
rence. Late in the seventeenth century it raged in 
New England ; and so recently as the middle of the 
eighteenth century a witch was hanged in Scotland. 
Now, this was generally a period of remarkable mental 
activity. Leibnitz, and Locke, Newton, Berkley, and 
Barrow lived within this period. It was a period 
which, in Protestant Europe, had not only shaken off 
the traditions of the middle ages, but was in strong 
antagonism against them. It was a period in which 
things were not the more firmly held, but the more 
readily discarded, the more they had been esteemed as 
sacred ; a period in which numbers of minds were 
busy with inquiry, in which many were even zealous 
in scepticism. Bayle, Hume, Voltaire, and Rousseau 
lived within this period. It was in the most Protestant 
places of this most Protestant era that a movement 
sprang up against witchcraft which was fierce almost 
to insanity. New England and Scotland have long 
boasted the most intelligent masses in the world ; and 
this not alone from excellent provision for popular educa- 
tion, but from native sagacity of understanding. The 
people of both countries are remarkable for their shrewd 
and thoughtful habits, for their grave and logical intel- 
lects. The people of both countries are acute and meta- 
physical ; much given to examination ; much disposed 
to analyze ; little liable to be deceived by the illusions 



PUBLIC OPINION. 115 

of superstition or led away by the vagaries of imagina- 
tion. The people of both countries are a sober and a 
careful people ; prudent and skilful in their affairs ; 
industrious in their earthly concerns, and not addicted 
overmuch to spiritual hallucinations ; not indifferent to 
the things of the future life ; but not entirely negligent 
about the things of the present life. Yet these keen, 
active, reflective, calculating people could hang and 
burn unfortunate old women who, unhappily for them- 
selves, had left far behind them the fascinating sorcery 
of youth and beauty, and replaced it by the haggard 
necromancy of age and decrepitude. At twenty their 
spells were the brilliant eye and rosy cheek, for which 
they had flattery and submission; at eighty they had 
gray hairs, seamed faces, wore spectacles, hobbled on 
crutches, and possibly in some instances were not 
blessed with the mildest tempers : herein was the evi- 
dence of their offence, and for their offence they were 
roasted or strangled. There were thousands who could 
believe that creatures who evinced all mental imbecility 
were leagued with potent spirits ; that creatures who 
were themselves loaded with infirmities had command 
of all diseases and power of all cures ; that creatures 
who were dying for a meal could invoke famine or 
avert it ; that creatures who could only limp to the 
whipping post could ride upon the whirlwind and 
direct the storm ; that creatures who could not hide 
from a constable were leagued with invisible principali- 
ties. And for this witchcraft, which did not feed, or 
clothe, or lodge, or cure its votaries, — for this, the rag- 
gedest and the scurviest of occupations, detested here 
and damned hereafter, — for this sorry, profitless thing 



116 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIFS. 

there were thousands who could believe their fellow- 
creatures had bartered their immortal souls ; shrewd, 
sagacious inhabitants of New England and of Scot- 
land could place faith in the existence of such a foolish 
compact — a faith that utterly astounds us when we 
consider that New Englanders and Scots might chal- 
lenge the whole of Christendom at a bargain, and be 
sure to come off the victors. The puzzle is, to think 
how they could ever for an instant suppose that even 
Satan himself, with all his cunning and all his wiles, 
could pawn such a miserable imposition upon the most 
silly of their fellow-citizens. The wonder would in- 
deed be unexplainable if we did not know that there 
is nothing so irrational which masses of men will not 
credit if it falls in with their prejudices ; that there is 
nothing so cruel which they will not inflict if their 
passions gain ascendency. When once the popular 
mind is thus aroused it will not be questioned or 
counselled ; it will not be checked or reproved ; it 
takes no account of reflection, or wisdom, or prudence, 
or justice, or pity ; it acknowledges no authority either 
human or divine ; the gentle become furious and the 
bad become monsters. The record of sacred truth 
says, " Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil ; " 
the record of human experience says, also, Thou shalt 
not follow a multitude hastily to do any thing. 

Nor shall we infer that the multitude are right 
because great men are among them. Great men are 
not more than others secured against the errors or 
passions of their times. They as well as the people 
are children of the age. The fearful length to which 
some delusions have been carried, and the dreadful 



PUBLIC OPINIOK. 117 

effects to which they led, could never have existed had 
not the authority of influential men sustained them. 
In this very thing, witchcraft, all the madness and 
cruel folly were not of the people. Erudite theo- 
logians proved it from holy writ ; legislators met it 
with dreadful penalties ; learned judges approved the 
verdicts of ignorant juries ; and civilized governments 
enforced each horrid sentence. Sir Matthew Hale, one 
of the finest scholars, one of the purest men, stamped 
such verdicts with his sanction and left them for the 
last result of law by his fatal sentence ; and yet, in 
reading over the evidence given on some of these trials, 
we are convulsed between laughter and weeping at the 
silliness to which the wisest can descend and the mis- 
ery and sorrow which their silliness can occasion. 
Besides, intellectual men are not always free from 
motives that, to speak cautiously, are at least open to 
suspicion, in their conformity to the prevailing senti- 
ment. There is a fear of the multitude, where dissent 
might possibly bring danger, which will often restrain 
superior minds ; for it is not all good logicians who feel 
themselves called on to be heroes or martyrs. There 
is a flattery of the multitude, also, of which greatest 
men are not always incapable, for the love of popu- 
larity, for the ambition of distinction, for the glory 
of applause, for the gain or the pride of office ; and 
there is no flattery so sweet to masses or to indi- 
viduals as the praise of their wisdom. A man will 
sometimes flatter a multitude who would lay his head 
upon the block sooner than flatter a king. Men of no 
common minds are often warped by the pressure of 
imposing masses, and are not always able to stand 



118 ILLUSTRATION'S OF GEXIUS. 

against the temptation to speak what is agreeable 
rather than what is true. Multitudes, like monarchs, 
will not always bear the truth ; and multitudes, like 
monarchs, will but seldom hear it. Both monarchs 
and multitudes delight in adulation ; and as such is not 
what sincere friends can offer, sincere friends either of 
them rarely have. What they will pay for, that they 
get ; and those who have praise to sell dispose of it, 
not for the good of the multitude, or the good of the 
monarch, but the good of themselves. 

And time is no more an infallible test of truth than 
great masses or great names. This matter of witch- 
craft, which I have selected for my text and my ex- 
ample, had all the guaranty that time could afford. 
It had come down from the earliest ages, and from the 
earliest ages it had been condignly punished. A 
proposition is not true because it is old ; it is not false 
because it is new. A proposition that now includes 
an essential truth is not less sacredly a truth in this 
hour than it will be at the end of a hundred centuries. 
We attach, in fact, a mystical value to duration which 
does not belong to it. Time is not an agency, and has 
no power in itself. Time is no causation. We say, 
to be sure, that cities waste by the lapse of ages, and 
that buildings turn to ruins by the force of years ; 
but we only speak in a figure, although we often mis- 
take the figure for a reality. Cities waste and build- 
ings come to ruin by means of their own perish- 
ableness ; but so is it not with nature. The heav- 
ens shine on with perpetual lustre ; the ocean rolls, 
unworn, and strikes along the earth from century 
to century, with sounds that seem the echoes of 



PUBLIC OPINION. 119 

eternity. Yet we can conceive of the heavens fall- 
ing into years and of the ocean dry as an autumn 
pool ; but truth and falsehood have no age, nor even 
in thought can we assign them any. Time, it may be 
said, does not give to an opinion its truth or falsehood ; 
it merely proves it. But not always. Tenets which 
we esteem the grossest errors have maintained their 
force for thousands of years ; and, if no foreign agencies 
disturb them, they may continue for thousands of years 
to come. Left to themselves, duration does nothing 
but confirm the delusion. Who can assign the era 
when the mythologies of India first began ? and, without 
other influences than time, who can tell when they are 
to end ? The energies of new minds, the force of new 
circumstances, cause a shaking among old dogmas and 
old institutions ; but without these they would lie as 
quietly as the bones that moulder in an unfrequented 
cemetery. How many hoary errors, how many conse- 
crated vanities, how many venerable falsehoods, how 
many traditional fooleries have men in these later 
times discovered and discarded ! And herein they have 
carried forward the course of thought. But, while 
men discard some errors which do not suit them, they 
adhere to others, which, though more congenial, are 
not the less pernicious : and herein there is much work 
always for the thinker and reformer. 

I would not, therefore, adopt an opinion because it 
is public opinion ; and, indeed, on that very account, 
I would scrutinize it all the more cautiously. There 
are cases in which what is called public opinion wants 
the first conditions of any real mental judgment ; for 
what are the first conditions of an actual, an impartial, 



120 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

in fact, any mental, decision? Why, freedom of 
inquiry, freedom of discussion, freedom of expres- 
sion. If I am hindered of these, though in but one 
particular, in that particular I can have no opin- 
ion. And the influence of this slavery extends be- 
yond the reserved question ; it injures the general 
fairness and activity of my mind. Let but one subject 
be interdicted, and that subject will in itself become 
the centre of a tyranny boundless in its ramifications. 
I am not really free ; and if my thoughts are at all 
awake upon this subject, which I must not openly dis- 
cuss, I feel that I am not free ; I feel that my mind is 
in bondage, and that chains are upon my soul. You 
tell me in vain that in every thing else I have liberty. 
This is not true. Put a fetter on one foot of a man, 
and you restrain his entire body ; clasp a manacle on 
his wrist, and the gall of the iron pinches him in 
every nerve. Turn me away from one question that 
I conceive it my right to examine, and you embar- 
rass all the workings of my whole intellectual con- 
stitution. Place me in a house and debar me from 
but one apartment in it, and all my movements are by 
that single caution rendered uneasy. You tell me in 
vain that I am free to all the others. I am not free ; 
I am constrained throughout ; I am a captive on every 
spot on which I tread ; it is a Bluebeard mansion to 
me ; the door of the forbidden chamber haunts me 
wheresoever I may be in the house ; I tremble when I 
pass it, and yet desire to open it ; the key is in my 
hand ; you give me leave to enter, but with the leave 
you inform me that my life shall be the forfeit. What 
liberty is this? and what, I ask you, does it signify 



PUBLIC OPINION. 121 

to me whether I am thus constrained by a majority or 
by a monarch ? Where is the real difference ? Neither 
does it much signify by what kind of penalty the re- 
striction is enforced. You may fine, you may imprison, 
you may scourge, or you may kill me ; or, not going 
thus far, you may confine my influence, circumscribe 
my talents, injure my name, deprive me of reputa- 
tion, debar me from office, rob me of friends, banish 
me from home, starve me by systematic neglect, or 
wither me by passive resistance. One class of penal- 
ties is nearly as effective as the other. I admit that a 
true man must at any cost express his opinion ; but 
martyrs are never so numerous as to constitute a pub- 
lic ; and, if they became a public, they would then be 
no longer martyrs. Penalty is directed against ex- 
pression, because expression is all that it can reach ; 
and even this no power endeavors to control except 
in specific cases and always under the plea of a social 
necessity. The most absolute tyrant does not pretend 
that he can hinder thought ; he assumes merely to 
regulate language. The most absolute tyrant does not 
imagine that he can entirely control the formation of 
opinion ; he assumes merely to interfere with its pub- 
lication. To prevent publication, or to punish it, 
includes all the claim he urges. And if he has any 
enlightenment, he does not press his despotism in an 
arbitrary spirit ; on the contrary, he often tolerates a 
wide latitude of speculation : it is only when specula- 
tion enters on forbidden ground that he makes his 
power felt ; and he can do this the more efiectually 
the more that he admits of liberty in an opposite 
direction. Now, the conclusion to which we arrive 



122 ILLUSTRATIONS OY GENIUS. 

here is extremely simple : the mere prevalence of ideas 
or institutions is no test of their truth or of their 
worth ; for either they may have never been examined or 
will tolerate no examination, and are thus maintaiD»?d 
by the acquiescence of habit or the silence of coercion. 
And, as I have already said, it does not signify what 
form the power has which exercises this coercion, 
whether it be in the personality of a king or the ab- 
straction of a majority ; to the degree that it crushes 
discussion and meets the proclamation of thought with 
threatening or infliction, to that degree it is a tyranny. 
No excuse — not even what is called necessity — can 
clear it from this name within these limits ; for the 
existence of the one includes the existence of the 
other ; the tyranny creates the necessity, and the 
necessity bears witness to the tyranny. 

Should we, then, in our estimate of opinion, pay no 
respect to the numbers who hold it, to the time it has 
endured, or to the great names by which it is is rec- 
ommended ? I say not so. Any one of these con- 
ditions may entitle an opinion to our examination ; but 
the whole of them united may not entitle it to our 
assent. The voice of the people may call for our hear- 
ing ; and we ought to give it with candor and attention. 
The voice of the gifted, too, may ask of us to listen ; 
and we ought to do so with intelligent respect. Nor 
is instruction alone our inducement; there is added 
that of an exalting pleasure. Communion with the 
wise is the joy of a noble soul ; and, while such a soul 
draws increase of life from their wisdom, it does not 
lose, but gains, in dignity, individuality, and inde- 
pendence. It is in the same spirit I would regard the 



PUBLIC OPINION. 123 

authority of antiquity, which, recklessly to disregard, 
may involve more folly than the most submissive 
obedience. Much as some may decry the wisdom of 
our ancestors, yet what were we without that wis- 
dom ? What were we without the works which they 
wrought ; the sciences which they studied ; the arts 
and letters which they left us ; the glorious principles 
which they consecrated for us ; the faith and hope 
which they taught for our instruction and support ; the 
deeds and sufferings which they accomplished for our 
good and for our example ; the laws, the liberty, the 
civilization which we have as the last testament from 
generations of heroic fidelity and unconquerable strug- 
gle ? When standing amidst scenes in which they 
lived and died, we feel how unworthy is that contempt 
which has nothing to admire in the glory of the past. 
When passing through the vacant halls in which the 
great of other generations reasoned or prayed, these 
solemn structures tell us, with more impressiveness than 
speech, that our fathers did not reason or pray in vain ; 
and while we gaze on the beauty which fills the courts 
wherein they worshipped and crowns the towers which 
they raised, the souls, we know, could not be gross 
whose ideals took shape and body in forms so sublime. 
We muse upon the sainted ashes which these temples 
overshadowed ; while we muse the fire burns ; and 
from the very dust a flame comes out to melt the cold- 
ness of our hearts. We go away from their shrines 
with the glow of an unselfish enthusiasm upon our 
faces ; we give God thanks that he has left no age 
barren of enriching graces — that he has left no age 
without wisdom, piety, and patriotism. Still we must 



124 ILLUSTRATIONS OP GENIUS. 

constantly fall back upon our own minds, and there 
seek for the real test of rectitude and duty. We must 
constantly subject the impressions from without to the 
scrutiny within, and try the voice of the multitude or 
the voice of ages by the spirit of reason. Honest to 
our best conviction, there is nothing that can do us 
injury ; and, though we should stand alone, it is our 
duty so to stand. Traitors to our idea of right, we 
are then, and only then, properly alone ; for we are 
cut off from all the true and holy men that ever lived ; 
we are separated from all the just minds in the uni- 
verse ; we are dissociated from God himself, the perfect 
reason -and the perfect right. We are then, indeed, 
ruined and ignoble ; no genius can give us dignity, 
no applause can give us fame ; we have done ourselves 
that injury which no energies of earth or hell could do 
us ; we have branded our own souls with the black 
and burning stamp of an inward and spiritual infamy. 
But what we call public opinion is sometimes more ; 
it is public conviction ; and this is sustained by indi- 
vidual decision, and has its strength from such decision 
alone, in all thoroughly free communities. Without 
the judgment of individual minds, whenever that judg- 
ment is possible, aggregate assertion is but temporary 
fashion, and it may change with the wind ; but when 
it is the aggregate assertion of intelligent consent its 
direction is as fixed as the channel of a mighty river, 
and it is as irresistible as its cataract. It is, in fact, the 
action of a great law, a law of nature ; and every law 
of nature is irreversible except by the Author of nature. 
In speaking of opinion in its utmost power, and es- 
pecially in relation to its power on a large scale, in 



PUBLIC OPINION. 125 

the present age, I have mainly in view the strongest 
meaning in which the word is used. Our age, then, in 
the highest sense, is an age of opinion ; and not the 
less, but the more so, because it is not an age of vio- 
lence. The greatest agency of any force, physical or 
mental, is not that which we recognize in its violence ; 
it is that of which, by reason of its order, we take but 
little notice. Violence is the agency of a restricted, 
and not of a diffusive, force ; and accordingly it is 
sudden, casual, local, and transient. We are startled 
by the vivid flash of the lightning ; we hear with awe 
the booming of the thunder ; deluges lay districts in 
waste and strike their inhabitants with consternation ; 
tempests plough into the depths of ocean ; earthquakes 
shake into dust cities that were built to challenge 
time; and yet these are poor compared with the 
agencies which never cause astonishment. The flash 
of the lightning is nothing compared with the force of 
the moveless stars. The meeting of cloud with cloud, 
from which the thunder springs, is a trivial incident 
contrasted with the noiseless marriage of the earth and 
sun, from which there comes forth life and all that glad- 
dens it. The dew transcends the deluge ; the tempest 
is but a temporary destroyer ; the tranquil air is the sub- 
stance of a universal vitality. The earthquake or the 
volcano may desolate a province ; but the mystic energy 
which tints a flower or shapes a blade of grass has not 
less evidence of the creative Being whose essence has 
no form and whose workings have no sound. Opinion 
is the agency by which the human mind most acts in 
society and on it. That agency in our country does 
not show itself in anarchy, but in order. It is thence 



126 ILLL'STRATIOXS OF GEXITJS. 

that it lias such a power. It not only sanctions the 
form of government, but in a great measure indicates 
the nature of its authority and defines the limits of its 
rule. It not only chooses the makers of laws, but it 
overlooks their administration ; and, passing beyond 
the bounds of merely technical law, it establishes an 
unwritten legislation of its own, which, right or wrong, 
it is all but impossible to escape. 

Our country is peculiarly one of masses. We speak 
not here of men gathered into blind cohesion and 
moved in slavish obedience to command ; we speak of 
men thinking and men free, each acting upon his own 
decision, and yet each acting with the whole. These 
are the masses, that in their gatherings are truly sub- 
lime ; these are the masses, that, assembled together in 
sobriety and peace, in the dignity of individual choice, 
and the potency of collective will, exhibit a spectacle 
of living majesty than which the stars look down 
on nothing finer. The masses are becoming the su- 
preme social authority. This power will be bet- 
ter conceived of when we think of it as difiused over 
the entire extent of the country, omnipresent from 
the centre to the extremities, lurking in every recess, 
quickening every impulse, intwined with every in- 
terest, controlling every movement of the national 
existence. Consider that, of the millions of grown-up 
men in this nation, wherever they are, — tossed on the 
billows of the sea, roughing life on its rivers and its 
lakes, hewing down its woods, ploughing up its prai- 
ries, busy in its fields or cities, in its factories or 
forges, no matter how clad or how fed, no matter 
how lodged, be it in marble palace by the Hudson or 



rUBLIC OPINION. 127 

in log hut by the Arkansas, — consider, I say, that of 
these millions there is scarcely one whose head is not 
thinking, whose passions are not working, in connection 
with public events ; consider that it is by such head 
thinkings and such passion workings public events are 
determined ; find, if you can, an idea which will unite 
the aggregate of this power and the aggregate of its 
result, and you have the exponent of a greatness which, 
for compass and for importance, there are but few 
other earthly conceptions that can well outmeasure. 

But here the question occurs, — a most solemn 
question it is, — What is the future to expect from this 
power ? Is it to be a progress in excellence, or is it to 
be a growth in evil ? The power may be in either 
of these directions according to its spirit and according 
to its training. Should it be in the wrong one, it 
would be terrible in proportion to its enormous 
strength. How, then, is this power to be not only safe, 
but hopeful ; not brutal, but humane ; not destructive, 
but gracious ? By progressive culture, intellectual and 
moral ; a culture not partial, but complete ; the culture 
which builds up the man in his fulness and his maturity. 
The results of such a culture are wisdom and virtue, 
without which a nation can no more have security than 
an individual. A nation, like an individual, to be 
secure in the relations that are near, must look to those 
relations which are remote ; and to sustain a worthy 
life, to enjoy enlarged and lasting good, a nation, like 
an individual, must lay restraint upon itself. Much 
might be said on this intellectual and moral wisdom 
and the means of diffusing it ; all of it might be im- 
portant, but all of it would not be suitable to this 



128 ILLUSTEATIOXS OF GENIUS. 

essay. Much miglit be said upon the importance of 
sound and universal education, an importance amount- 
ing almost to a necessity. The danger of ignorance in 
a country so extensive, so various in its resources, and 
so comprehensive in its relations, — the danger of 
ignorance in a country with so vast and increasing a 
population, in which every man holds trust the most 
momentous, — is a subject which engages the best minds 
of the nation, and it is one upon which the best minds 
can have no more than sufficient power and no more 
than sufficient concern. No genius can be too august, 
no greatness of expression can be too impressive, to 
picture the danger to such a country from ignorance. 
Education is, as I have said, not merely a matter of 
prudence, but a matter of necessity : and as no educa- 
tion could be tolerated here except one that was ani- 
mated by the spirit of political liberty, there is the 
more need to care for the spirit of individual liberty ; 
there is the more need to keep the organization of 
popular dominion from utterly crushing the action of 
individual independence. An education is of impera- 
tive consequence which shall cherish this individual 
soul ; which shall hold most sacred its rights of think- 
ing and its rights of speech ; which shall honor fidelity 
to its own convictions and fearless expression of them ; 
which shall rear up the nobleness of the state in the 
nobleness of intellects, and not train up intellects to be 
sacrificed to the glory of the state. My object, how- 
ever, is not to plead for general education, or to define 
what is the best education ; and, having ventured these 
hasty suggestions, I quit the subject. I will merely 
now, in this closing portion of my argument, ofi*er 



PUBLIC OPINION. 129 

some remarks on two agencies which have incalculable 
impression on the mind of society and on its opinions : 
these are, public speakers and the public press. 

The medium by which spirit communicates with 
spirit has in it something of sacredness in the humblest 
intercourse : it becomes a most exalted and a most 
religious trust when it assumes the position of public 
speech ; for what position is it that a public speaker 
can occupy which is not surrounded with solemn rela- 
tions ? Is it the popular and political assembly ? Is 
it the court of law ? Is it the hall of legislation ? 
Assuredly it is none of these. Is it, then, the house 
of God ? It were blasphemy to say so. If a man can 
go among the people and not feel that the first duty 
he owes to them, to himself, to his country, to human- 
ity, and to God is truth, that his imperative obli- 
gation is to tell it, he is not fit to address them. If 
he courts them for their patronage, if he flatters them 
for applause, counterfeit zeal as he may, it is kindled 
in selfishness ; it is nourished by the hopes of sordid- 
ness or vanity. He wants the essential requisite of an 
ennobling eloquence, of a genuine speaker, a brave and 
disinterested sincerity. If the honest man speaks, he 
must speak what seems to him the truth ; if this will 
not be heard, he must needs be silent ; if silence in the 
case be wrong, then, come what may, he must tell 
what he believes and gladly take the penalty it brings. 
If a man goes into a court of law and labors to wrest 
a decision, not by legitimate argument, but from, crude 
feeling and false opinion, he becomes disloyal to the 
highest trusts which can be given or betrayed. He 
» 9 



130 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

owes a duty to his client, but he owes a higher duty to 
society, of which his client is a member ; he is bound 
to make the best of his case, but he is not bound to 
establish it on the subversion of all the principles 
which hold men together in communities ; and if the 
tendency of his doings issued in a general fact, his 
client would be destroyed in the common ruin, and his 
o^vn success would be lost in the destruction of all 
security. If he contends that individual passion should 
judge the measure of its own wrongs and act with 
impunity on the judgment; if he substitute private 
vengeance for legal award — and to such purpose are 
pleadings that we have read on occasions not unfre- 
quent ; if he sets at defiance the general arrangements 
which collective experience has found necessary for 
social tranquillity and social defence, — he then becomes 
the ruthless spoliator of all peaceful protection ; he 
profanes the sacredness of Justice under the shadow 
of her sanctuary ; and he preaches the ghastly doctrines 
of anarchy in the very temple of civilization. If a man 
forgets the high commission which sends him to the 
legislature and the glorious purposes which should 
guide him in it, — if, on the contrary, he is mindful only 
of pride or faction, — he is more guilty than the other 
speakers to whom I have alluded by so much as the 
wickedness of that man is greater who poisons a 
fountain than he who sullies a stream. As to the 
pulpit, it is not a thing for comment here ; I will 
merely observe, as Henry IV., of France, once re- 
marked, " tha4 if honor was banished from every 
other place on earth, it ought to be found in the 



PUBLIC OPINION. 131 

breasts of kings," so, if truth and fearless integrity 
had no refuge besides in the world, they ought to have 
in the pulpit an unconquerable fortress. 

If I can conceive of nothing meaner than men who, 
in these situations, are disloyal to their trusts, I can 
conceive of nothing grander than men who have the 
ability to occupy them well and the virtue to occupy 
them faithfully ; for what is there loftier in spirit or 
position than that of the man who stands up undaunted 
in the midst of his fellow-citizens to address them in 
words of noble wisdom, and not in the bluster of syc- 
ophant declamation ; who loves them too deeply to 
deal by them falsely, and respects himself too much to 
bend to them slavishly? And surely, also, the office 
of the pleader, not less than that even of the magis- 
trate, is a consecrated office, and he who is worthy of 
it must so feel it ; the man whose sacred guidance is 
reverence for order ; whose great desire, whether as 
accuser or advocate, is, that the cause of justice be main- 
tained ; and who will always be more ready to exert 
his eloquence for the destitute oppressed than for the 
rich transgressor. O, it is a glorious sight to see a 
man doing bravely the work that duty has appointed 
him to do ; to behold him, strong in his generous hardi- 
hood of soul, firm in the might of his integrity, in the 
tranquil majesty of reason, and with the glow of a great 
enthusiasm, looking calmly on the dangers that appall 
more feeble spirits, vindicating the rights of humanity 
with that holy and that fearless speech which only 
humanity and heaven can inspire, with that holy and 
that fearless speech that flatters not nor quails in the 
presence of monarchs or the presence of mobs. I 



132 ILLUSTRATIONS OP GENIUS. 

would rather be for one hour such a man, have such an 
opportunity and be equal to it, than own all the em- 
pire which despots ever cursed, from Nero to Nicholas. 
I have specified a pleader ; but what I have just said 
will answer equally for a senator — the man who toils 
through years of resisted struggle, not for questions 
that lie within the limits of his party, but for principles 
that are as wide as our nature, for principles that are 
as deep as our origin and as lasting as our existence. 
This man is not one who waits until a just measure is 
the mere eclio of changed opinion, until the very 
selfish adopt it from popular expediency. He is not 
one who looks quietly on while a measure bufi*ets for its 
life against the foaming waters of opposition, and when 
it gets safely on the shore " encumbers it with help." 
He is one whose voice is often at first alone, a still 
small voice in the moral desert against the wind, and 
the earthquake, and the fire of strong and evil pas- 
sions. He is one that estimates a good cause and true 
as worth more than cheers or smiles, and a thing not 
to be forsaken for the sneer of the sceptic, the jest of 
the witling, or the yell of the vulgar. He has faith in 
his work ; and often the consolation is given to him to 
behold his work increase ; to behold the hidden places of 
corruption exposed and the growth of a thousand wrongs 
prevented ; to behold harsh enactments repealed, cruel 
codes abolished, and inhuman abuses eradicated ; to 
behold more care and pity awakened for the neglect- 
ed, more earnest desire to cure the soul rather than to 
kill the body, and in the whole of legislation more 
tolerance, more wisdom^ and more mercy. The speaker 
in the pulpit can take a yet higher place than any ; for 



PUBLIC OPINION. 133 

to him are given more commanding themes and the 
sanction of a holier authority. Let him feel the worth 
of his themes, let him feel the power of his authority, 
and no other speech can have the life of his. Meet 
always for time, for place, and for relation, it yet con- 
tains the spirit in it of the eternal, the universal, and 
the absolute. Let him see humanity in all ; let him 
speak to that and for it ; he will then always speak 
nobly and he will always speak truly. He will speak 
out from an abundant sympathy ; he will speak out 
of an enlarged fulness of expression ; he will speak out 
of an enlarged compass of charity. He will not sever 
religion from justice, nor dissociate sanctity from good- 
ness ; though pointing to the skies and inciting the 
soul to upward and infinite aspiration, he will not over- 
look the ruggedness of the path on which poor mortals 
travel ; he will pity those who fall, and aid them again 
to rise ; he will encourage those who faint, cheer them, 
and keep them onward ; he will share with them him- 
self fully the struggles of the pilgrimage ; and while 
opening to them all holy scripture, while discoursing 
on all holy things, he causes their hearts to burn within 
them, it is as he talks to them by the way, in the com- 
panionship of the same journey to the same destination. 
Not unmindful of the prosperous, he will care thought- 
fully for the destitute ; no railing accuser, he will yet 
not fail when occasion calls to plead the cause of the 
injured and the weak ; manly, but humble ; dauntless, 
yet meek ; fearing none and loving all ; his oppor- 
tunities are grand, and, if he uses them, his work is 
blessed. Filled with the solemnity of his office, he 
will preserve it sacred from the passions of the world ; 



134 ILLXJSTEATIONS OF GENIUS. 

conscious as he is tliat life is but a narrow isthmus 
between two eternities, a little space of grayish twilight 
in the midst of darkness, on one side of it the mysteries 
of being and on the other the depths of the grave, he 
will have no disposition to mingle in the noisy and 
selfish emulations around him. He is not sent to con- 
form to social prejudices, or to flatter popular impulses, 
or to echo acceptable opinions ; to cry aloud with the 
multitude for the figment of the age or the vanity of 
the hour. No ; his mission is to immortal souls, to draw 
them from their faith in delusions to the desire for per- 
fection ; from the sophistries of falsehood and the mis- 
leadings of passion to the simplicity of truths and the 
security of rectitude ; to address them in the whole 
range of their moral existence ; to insist without com- 
promise on its everlasting rights and changeless obliga- 
tions ; to keep nothing timidly back, but openly and 
bravely declare the whole counsel of God and the 
whole duty of man. 

All that I have written will apply with tenfold em- 
phasis to the press. A writer in a daily or any popu- 
lar periodical can address a thousand for every hundred 
that the most popular orator can generally collect. 
The press, as true to its own highest greatness, is the 
sublimest creation of modern society and modern civili- 
zation. It is the champion of liberty, the friend of 
virtue, the punisher of vice, the advocate of the 
injured ; it is the shield of the feeble and the scourge 
of tyrants. The press, when faithful to its exalted 
duties, has an austere but yet a benignant influ- 
ence. It keeps watch over the best interests of the 
community ; but its vigilance is that of a guardian. 



PUBLIC OPINION. 135 

and not of a spy. It brings out modest merit to tlie 
light and cherishes it with cordial praise ; it vindicates 
the innocent while it chastises the guilty ; it stirs up 
the lovingness of compassion ; it urges on the exertion 
of charity ; it pleads the cause of the needy ; it tells 
the story of their sufferings with ten thousand tongues ; 
it calls for sympathy towards them with every entreaty 
of eloquence and pathos ; it carries abroad the orphan's 
prayer and it causes the widow's heart to sing for joy. 
Such I take the press to be in its legitimate voca- 
tion. But, when false to this, it becomes the pan- 
der of low appetites, the minister of gross or ma- 
lignant passions, the fomenter of strife and violence ; 
when it bandies virulent abuse and unscrupulous in- 
vective in the degrading interchange of scurrilous 
personalities ; when it caters for the hunger of a vicious 
curiosity, the wretched offscourings of gossip and of 
scandal; when it violates the sacredness of homes, 
and oversteps the just limits of a public censor, to 
intrude on the rights of private character ; when in 
great concerns it substitutes accusation for argument 
and odium for discussion ; when it defends at every 
hazard to truth the side on which it is enlisted, and 
shrinks from no misstatement that offers an advantage ; 
when in the zeal for party it gives up the cause of • 
right to the demands of a corrupt expediency, or in the 
zeal of creed immolates charity on the altar of the sect, 
or, for the furtherance of a tortuous policy or the ends 
of individual ambition, sacrifices the claims of justice 
and humanity at the shrine of power, — it then strips 
itself of dignity and clothes itself with baseness ; it 



136 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GEXIUS. 

does not teach, but deprave, tlie mind of the commu- 
nity ; and it is not the glory, but the shame, of liberty. 
Let freedom be cherished ; first of all, and last, let 
freedom be held sacred ; let it be guarded and sus- 
tained ; for it is the essential condition of all noble 
existence, and without it no generous virtue can come 
to its maturity. Let the loss of freedom be regarded 
as among the greatest of calamities. No mere abstract 
or aggregate dominion can compensate for it. We do 
not live as masses ; v^e live as individuals. All real life 
is individual ; to the degree, therefore, that individuals 
are crushed, life is crushed. I can accept of nothing 
for my personality ; and this personality I know only in 
my freedom. Take that from me, and you leave me 
nothing after worth the keeping ; take that from me, 
and you destroy me. This freedom rests within the 
mind ; it is the very life of intelligent existence. There 
is, therefore, in the universe nothing more desirable 
than a free mind ; as there is nothing more sublime, 
nothing more godlike. So long as a man has this, he 
has that which is invaluable ; he has that which nothing 
can subdue ; he has that which nothing can subvert ; he 
has that which renders him a monarch, though he may 
lie down upon the bare and cold bosom of his mother 
earth ; he has a throne which is established forever 
and a kingdom which can never know an end. He is 
independent. A rack may tear his body, but it cannot 
touch his soul ; a dungeon may hide him from the 
light, but he has a light within which nothing can ex- 
tinguish. Changes of fortune may come rapidly upon 
him ; each may be the messenger of a new aifliction ; 



PUBLIC OPINION. 137 

liis worldly riches may disappear ; his children may 
die ; his friends may desert him ; his foes may revile 
him ; his health may leave him too ; sickness may turn 
his fairness to ashes ; yet poor, companionless, weak, 
with none to bid him hope and none to do him rever- 
ence, he has in that independent soul of his a grandeur 
before which the blaze of royalty grows pale ; he has 
in it a might before which the powers of empire are 
feeble. This is the freedom which a man should guard 
invincibly ; which he should hold most religiously ; and 
which, if he parts with, his life is little worth. This is 
the freedom which a man should esteem above political 
privilege, above outward prosperity, above all the com- 
forts of ease, and above all the pleasures of sense. 



THE PHILANTHROPIC SENTIMENT. 

I PROPOSE to make some remarks on the sentiment 
of philanthropy ; the sentiment of love to man in gen- 
eral, irrespective of locality, of condition, or of creed. 
And, despite of the acutest logic which the ethics of 
selfishness can use, I hold that philanthropy is a reality ; 
that it has evidence most manifest of being a quality of 
our nature. We are conscious of benevolent regards to- 
wards men merely as men ; and, because they are simply 
of our kind, our hearts prompt us to do them good. 
When the occasion strongly urges, this becomes appar- 
ent ^^'ith the force and certainty almost of an instinct. 
Our souls are constantly excited by deeds of the highest 
charity done to strangers, and frequently not only to 
strangers, but to enemies ; the poetry, the songs, the 
romances of all ages and nations imply the glory of 
this sentiment ; and no literature was ever founded 
on the opposite or the denial of it. 

Still I can conceive of a person saying that it is all a 
fiction, without reason to sustain it as a possibility, or 
evidence to sustain it as a fact. He would, perhaps, 
insist that man, as a species, is too vast an object to be 
comprehended by the imagination, and much less to 
be infolded in the affections. But, further, he would 
possibly insist, that, laying aside all merely speculative 

(138) 



THE PHILANTHROPIC SENTIMENT. 139 

considerations, the spirit and the conduct of the world 
go to show that the idea of philanthropy is a phantom 
or a mockery. Nor can it be denied that, looking 
severely upon the actions of society, he might bring 
much that would be plausible, and not a little that 
would be true, to support the practical side of his 
objection. But I do not assert that there is not in 
social conduct a great deal that mars this sentiment, 
that is harshly inconsistent with it, that is strangely 
contradictory to it. Still I do contend that its ele- 
ments are in the human heart, in every human heart. 
I shall make no attempt to meet that part of the objec- 
tion which implies the impossibility of the sentiment 
from the vagueness or greatness of the object ; for if 
the objection were indeed valid, then any general 
sentiment were impossible ; as for instance, the love of 
virtue, because virtue is a thing spiritual and impalpa- 
ble ; the love of God, because God is infinite and in- 
scrutable. Waving at once all metaphysical argument, 
I shall here devote some remarks to the sentiment, 
considered first as an inspiration, and considered 
secondly as an agency. 

As an inspiration, the sentiment of philanthropy is 
most quickening and most expansive. The case is not 
thus with the selfish passions. The heart in which 
they are strongest has the fewest sympathies and the 
coldest nature. Men, it is true, have many combina- 
tions based upon the selfish passions ; but in such 
combinations there is no loving interchange of spirit, 
there is no mutual bestowment of confidence and re- 
spect. Men may be joined in the compact of profitable 
wrong ; but, though the bonds of interest be many, 



140 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

bond of unity there is none. Men may be bound to- 
gether in low and worldly purposes ; but their estimate 
of each other is on a level with their objects. These 
generate no love among themselves and attract no 
love from those outside their association ; collectively 
or individually, they inspire no general admiration or 
affection. It is not thus with philanthropic characters 
or philanthropic deeds. Tell the remotest tribes, of a 
preeminently benevolent man in language which they 
can fully understand, they will love him ; and they will 
love you who tell them, if they see in you a likeness to 
him. Against, such a character national differences 
and national dialects do not prevail ; the beauty of it 
is discernible in every climate, the worth of it is trans- 
latable into every language. It rises above all wars 
and hatreds ; it sheds calm light upon human strifes ; 
and, for the moment, it shames them into peace. 
Frenchmen hew down British ; yet to the fiercest Gaul 
the name of Howard would be a word of reverence. 
Englishmen devastate France ; yet would the rudest 
soldier among them bend in the presence of a Fenelon. 
The thoughts and deeds of such have no limitation ; they 
come out from the love of humanity, and humanity 
claims them for its own. They are the elements of the 
eloquence to which all nations listen ; they are the ele- 
ments of the poetry that all nations feel ; and, whether 
in oratory or song, with them, indeed, is a universal 
spirit and a universal speech. Observe how the eyes of 
an assembly will kindle, and how their hearts will beat, 
and how their breath will hang' upon the speaker's 
word when he recites, with whatever plainness, the 
doing of a generous action or draws the picture of a 



THE PHILANTHROPIC SENTIMENT. 141 

good man's life. But let that good man himself 
speak ; let him go before them moved by interest for 
his kind ; let him address them from the fulness of his 
heart, and that the fulness of a mighty love : the souls 
that were dead become alive ; they are quickened into 
his own great being ; they are dilated with his enthu- 
siasm ; they are torn from the earth to which they 
were fastened ; they are carried up into the heavens as 
in a chariot of fire ; they are transported with the 
splendor of the prophet upon whose countenance they^ 
gaze, in whose light they rejoice ; they are elevated 
to the loftiness of his views ; they burn with the fervor 
of his zeal ; and though much of this will depart when 
the prophet is silent, yet will not the prophet pass 
away without leaving some of his spirit behind him. 

Every age as well as every nation confesses the 
power of philanthropic inspiration. The consent which 
men give to selfish sentiments is as transient as it is 
bounded. The prejudice or passion of the day is al- 
ways strong, blind as it is strong, and tyrannical as it 
is blind. Profit and power for a time laugh to scorn 
truth and justice. The sophists and the self-seekers 
prosper. The sycophants of dominion dress finely and 
fare sumptuously. Evil expediency governs the world ; 
and it hesitates at no means and it scruples at no in- 
struments. The teachers of true wisdom are hooted 
and mocked. The defenders of right and of humanity 
are ridiculed as visionaries, or they are tortured as 
destructives. The apostles of good will are hunted 
from city to city, and they sufier or they perish for 
their work. Socrates drinks his poison ; Elijah flies 
to the desert and hides himself in the cave ; Paul 



142 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

endures bonds, imprigonment, and dies upon the block. 
But, then, there was a Socrates, there was an Elijah, 
there was a Paul ; and so it is, that often in the worst of 
periods humanity vindicates itself the most heroically 
and the most divinely. The age of tyranny is that of 
the patriot ; the age of persecution is that of the mar- 
tyr ; the age of political corruption is that of the polit- 
ical reformer. It is, too, when the hearts of the task- 
masters are most dead to the cry of the oppressed, 
when the sighings of the forlorn are deepest by reason 
of their bondage, that heaven is pierced by their suppli- 
cations ; that God looks down on the misery of his 
suffering children ; that his ear opens to their groan- 
ings ; that he comes to their help against the mighty ; 
that he raises up advocates to plead their cause ; and 
that he calls forth deliverers to break their chains. 
And thus it is in times often when hope seems no 
longer for our nature that light bursts out from the 
gloom and covers the face of humanity with the glory 
of a new beauty. And though an evil generation may 
kill the bodies of mankind's benefactors, it cannot kill 
their souls ; dust goes to dust, but the spirit lives on- 
ward still ; and thus spirit works out in one age 
repentance for the sins of another ; and not repentance 
only, but amendment also. The children blush at that 
in which their fathers gloried ; the fathers slew the 
prophets, but the children canonize their memories ; 
and though while the children discern the guilt of their 
fathers they are often blind to their own, yet some- 
thing is gained by the acknowledgment of past error. 
Great excellence, like great truth, is but gradually 
opened to the mind of men ; when, however, it is fully 



THE PHILANTHROPIC SENTIMENT. 143 

discerned, mankind esteem it as the treasure that has 
no price and that never can be lost. 

As an agency, how manifold are the works of the 
philanthropic sentiment, all works of good, and, not the 
least among them, its works of mercy ! Wherever 
the sorrowing are concealed, Mercy seeks them out. 
Wherever misery hides from scorn, wherever penitence 
lies in the dust, there Mercy enters with her tearful 
eyes and her gentle words. I might speak much on 
the outward works of mercy — I might speak on that 
bounty which imitates the deeds of Christ, so far as 
man's weakness can imitate divine power. I could 
not, indeed, tell of sight restored to the eye that had 
been rayless, or of sound given to the ear which had 
been closed, or of motion and speech restored to the 
tongue which had been fastened and silent. I could 
not tell of health and strength miraculously bestowed 
on the maimed and the palsied frame, or wisdom on 
the torpid or frenzied mind, or the dead called up 
from the tomb to gladden once more in life their 
mourning friends, or of sinners converted by marvels 
from above ; but I might speak of homes for the 
blind and the dumb, where humanity does all that it 
can do to illuminate the darkened sense and to cheer 
the lonely heart. I might speak of asylums for the in- 
sane, where benignant skill in bestowing peace of intel- 
lect on the benighted soul seems to call back the age 
of miracle. I might speak of institutions which are a 
shelter for the widow and a guardianship for the 
orphan. I might speak of institutions which are open 
to childless age, where a rest is prepared for the worn 
frame and for the hoary head. I might speak of 



144 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

habitations whicli invite tlie lost and the unhappy to 
fly from crime and want ; and, thus speaking, I might 
choose for the field of my illustration the whole field 
of the world. Nor would I confine my remarks to 
efibrts for the improvement of men's physical and tem- 
poral condition ; for the intellectual and moral wants 
of mankind also engage a most extensive and a most 
enlightened benevolence. Philanthropy has apostle- 
ships for the higher man ; and, if time allowed, there 
are many of which I w^ould wish to speak — many that 
cause great hearts to ponder, that enlist for their ad- 
vancement wisdom, piety, genius, and eloquence ; 
apostleships that control the plans of the statesman 
and enter into the hope of the Christian. I might 
speak of those good m.essengers which philanthropy 
sent down into the gloomy mine to bring childhood to 
the air of heaven and to give it to a human life. I 
might speak of the ministries which philanthropy has 
established for the education of the neglected and the 
poor ; of the winning charities by which it has sought 
to attract vicious and ragged youth within the sound 
of decency and hope. I might speak of those minis- 
tries which it has despatched into the dark retreat of 
city vice and destitution, not alone to give refreshment 
to the fainting body, but to ofier help to the perishing 
soul. I might speak of those ministries which philan- 
thropy has carried to the prison, not merely in sur- 
rounding the captive with cleanliness, and light, and the 
common courtesies of men, but in the wise discipline 
which would reform his habits, the kind influence 
that would soften his affections, the Christian instruc- 
tion that would regenerate his mind, the godlike 



THE PHILANTHROPIC SENTIMENT. 145 

clemency that abhors contempt and vengeance, that 
would redeem, if possible, a spirit to its own respect 
and give it back recovered to society. I might speak 
of the ministries which philanthropy exerts respecting 
the guilty on the spirit of the community, urging it to 
reform rather than to destroy, and upon repentance to 
take once again its erring child to the shelter of a 
friendly bosom, not to repulse him in his approaches, 
but rather to meet even while he is yet a great way off, 
to help him to forget his degradation rather than to pour 
fresh shame.s upon his head, and thus to drive him, in 
his despair, to seek for refuge in lower depths of infamy. 
I might speak of the ministries which philanthropy 
exerts for universal emancipation, for universal free- 
dom — ministries by which it endeavors to render free- 
dom coextensive with the right to it, as the right to it 
is coextensive with man. I might speak of the min- 
istries which it commissions with the glad tidings 
of faith to men in distant nations, of fierce hab- 
its, and of strange tongues, regarding them all as 
brothers, however separated by distance, by habits, 
or by tongues ; yearning, despite of their differ- 
ences, to gather them all into the one household of 
God. I might speak on the various services which 
these labors have directly and collaterally done to 
civilization, how they have laid bare the world, how 
they have discovered its remote places, instructed 
barbarous tribes, opened new sources of wealth and 
knowledge, enlarged intercourse, translated languages, 
established schools, and laid the foundations of great, 
of growing, and of humanizing institutions. Of 
such things willingly I would speak ; but, with these 
10 



146 ILLITStRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

brief allusions, I must leave them to confine my atten- 
tion to a single point. 

The point that I would particularly notice is, that 
the works which are the most durable in the world 
are those in which the sentiment of philanthropy is the 
most imbodied. Humanity recognizes what belongs to 
itself, loves it, honors it, and preserves it. The rest 
it does not understand, and leaves it to vanish with the 
accidents with which it was associated. That which 
has been done for man, man will uphold ; but that 
which belongs merely to the time will pass away with 
the fashion of the time ; it will wax old as doth a gar- 
ment, and as a vesture it will be changed. Those na- 
tions, therefore, which developed most of the being of 
humanity live most in the life of our race. The 
Egyptians, with their concealed enigmas and their mon- 
strous structures, have utterly and forever perished. 
They have gone into absolute oblivion, and a darker 
night has fallen upon their history than any with 
which they have covered the mysteries of their religion. 
The soul of their nation is as voiceless as their Titanic 
heaps of earth ; their spirit is scattered with the dust 
or buried under symbols inscrutable ; their land is a 
mighty grave — not a collection of tombs, but one huge 
sepulchre ; the Pyramids are monuments of tyrants and 
their slaves ; they once overlooked a wilderness of life ; 
most appropriately and most fitly, they now over- 
look a wilderness of death. What traces have the 
Assyrians or Persians left of their widespread con- 
quests ? They who carry nothing but the brand and 
the sword imprint deep marks of their existence for a 
period in the burning and bloody furrows of their 



THE PHILANTHROPIC SENTIMENT. 147 

course ; but healing time closes them up and covers 
them with verdure : men keep no memory of those 
who brought them nothing except evil : the wick- 
ed are swallowed up in the darkness which they cre- 
ate ; and exterminators perish in as deep oblivion as 
their victims. . And why should they not ? Why should 
men desire to immortalize, even in infamy, their en- 
slavers and destroyers ? Why not leave their memo- 
ries to rot with the general ofFscouring which age after 
age destines to corruption? So is it not better that 
men should forget rather than remember^ when they 
can remember only to curse ? The malefactors of 
History are buried in her prison yard ; and they rest 
as obscurely as meaner but less guilty criminals. There 
let them lie. 

The nations, as I have said, that contained most of 
our general humanity continue most to live ; and as 
our examples can properly be taken only from, ancient 
ones, I refer especially to Judea, to Greece, and to 
Rome. Even in these, that alone endures which is of 
our essential and universal humanity. The temple and 
ceremonials of Judea are no more ; the people of Israel 
are a scattered remnant upon earth ; but the Bible sur- 
vives unworn, and the spirit of it belongs to all regions 
and all times. The grace and majesty in which Greece 
enshrined her mythology were the palace and decora- 
tions of a vision ; the fabric has dissolved almost with 
the emptiness of the vision, and left almost as little 
of a wreck behind. But her- poetry, her history, her 
eloquence, her philosophy, — these have not dissolved ; 
for they have that in them of our soul which renders 
them everlasting. Rome, with respect to her sway, has 



148 ILLUSTEATIONS OF GENIUS. 

transmitted little to us except the traditions of Iter 
conquests ; but she has bequeathed laws to mankind 
which are as changeless as equity. But, still, the gen- 
eral tendency to universality which distinguishes mod- 
ern civilization, and which will give to modern civili- 
zation its permanence and progress, did not exist in any 
one of these. Their best civilization was partial and 
exclusive. The civilization of the Jew was confined 
to a family ; it was domestic, local, ritual. The civili- 
zation of the Greek was limited to a few special 
tribes ; it was mythical, oligarchical, and artistic. The 
civilization of the Roman centred in giving empire 
to a single city ; it was military, and its chief aim 
was conquest and glory. Pride became the founda- 
tion of them all ; and each, according to its own ideal, 
labored to raise on this foundation the superstructure 
of its national grandeur. The civilization of the Jew 
rested on the pride of race ; that of the Greek on the 
pride of knowledge ; and that of the Roman on the 
pride of power. Christianity alone would base civili- 
zation upon the new commandment of charity, and 
make the life of it the spirit of brotherhood and the 
love of mankind. And it is as this spirit grows into 
the affairs of mankind that we advance securely, it is 
to the degree that it has penetrated the movements 
of society that we have really advanced. And wherever 
there is most liberty for the mind and least danger to 
the body, wherever education is best and legislation 
wisest, wherever right .is the most enjoyed and the 
least violated, such is the spirit that prevails. There 
is no man, therefore, however lowly his station, however 
few his opportunities, however moderate his talents. 



THE PHILANTHROPIC SENTIMENT. 149 

that out of a sincere heart acts for the love of his kind, 
but adds to the good which is immortal and divine. 
On the other hand, there is no man, whatever be his 
genius, his rank, his popularity, who narrows his 
heart towards his fellows, who blinds his moral sense 
to any rightful claim of justice or benevolence, who 
takes part with the wrong, but binds his fame to 
a body of death, and must go with it to corruption 
and to oblivion. Christianity is the element in 
modern civilization that secures it against the vicis- 
situdes of ancient civilization. Empires decayed ; 
cities left no trace where they had stood; struc- 
tures most stable crumbled and fell down ; nations be- 
came extinct ; governments turned to fooleries, and 
laws to idiot babble ; for the abiding life of our na- 
ture was not in them : change was to them annihila- 
tion ; and, when their forms were broken, their being 
was at an end. With a civilization into which Chris- 
tianity enters this cannot be. Revolutions may change 
constitutions and dynasties ; cities may be plundered 
and devastated ; property may be injured or destroyed ; 
but the principles of Christ, which are the principles 
of truth, of goodness, no deluge of invasion can sweep 
away and no force of battle can strike down. 

The relation which the philanthropic sentiment bears 
to some other sentiments shall occupy the remaining 
portion of this essay. 

It is not independent of the more intimate sentiments, 
and cannot be cultivated separately from the sentiments 
of home or country. Nay, it is by means of these that 
it has existence, and it is by the associations with 
which these connect it that it becomes a strong and a 



150 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

moving principle ; for if the idea of home, with its 
primitive instincts and its domestic affections, had no 
charm on my heart or imagination, it is plain that, ap- 
plied to the world at large, it would be a cold and a 
lifeless abstraction. It would have no meaning, no 
power, and no impulse. If the idea of my nearer 
kindred aroused no fond emotions in my breast, it were 
vain to tell me of kindred to my race. If I had no 
loving bonds which united me with a small home fami- 
ly, there are no ties by which I could be made to feel 
united with a boundless world family. Country be- 
comes dear through the endearment of home ; and the 
sentiment, as it widens to the fulness of its compass, 
embraces our kind within the circle of its regards. 
This must be the order ; for, if we had never loved 
those near to us whom we have seen, we could never 
love those afar off whom we have not seen nor can see. 
But, the feeling once existing, the association once origi- 
nated, I not only bring the distant man more into con- 
nection with this near emotion, but, in the force of it, I 
understand his being, and I can interpret his nature by 
my own. I appreciate, by these means, his gladness and 
his grief, his wishes and his fears. In the degree that 
I thus feel I am saved from doing him evil I am urged 
to do him good ; in the degree that we both mutually 
feel thus we are friends and benefactors. He has like 
relations to life that I have. He, as I, had a mother, 
and lay an infant on her bosom ; he had a father and 
a roof he called his home ; and, though he come from 
the other side of the globe, there are some passages of 
a common experience between us. When he is de- 
lighted or when he mourns, I have some knowledge 



THE PHILANTHROPIC SENTIMENT. 151 

why he rejoices or why he weeps. And this feeling is 
not less necessary in social and moral disparities than 
in national differences and distance ; it is necessary to 
keep alive the sense of our universal humanity, to 
strengthen the bonds of our kindred, to preserve un- 
broken that unity of sympathy which we may call the 
catholic faith of a common nature. It is necessary 
for the charities of our spirit to feel that the remote 
and colored savage is our brother ; that he has human 
instincts, human affections, which to him, as to our- 
selves, have their share of blessing and of suffering ; 
but it is often also just as necessary to feel thus to- 
wards the poor man at our doors or to the criminal 
within our borders. Adversity will indeed frequently 
so mar the visage of our neighbor that, left to our self- 
ishness, we would not willingly claim relationship to 
him ; and guilt may so disorder the soul of even our 
nearest friend that our pride would tempt us to deny 
him. But the knowledge that any of us may be vic- 
tims of distress or of temptation, united with the emo- 
tion of a large benevolence, will cause us to despise no 
man for his outward condition, nor to approach any 
without compassion, whatever be his sin. 

As the philanthropic sentiment arises out of the 
more immediate affections, so these affections are not 
complete if the philanthropic does not rest upon and 
ennoble them. Men may have very devoted affections 
within their homes, and be very selfish men notwith- 
standing. Men may be very loving within their thresh- 
olds, but, outside them, be rapacious, unmerciful, and 
unjust. A savage may cherish the most ardent attach- 
ment to the locality with which he is connected ; but 



152 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

if his affections extend no fartlier lie is still a savage, 
though these affections should be ever so heroic. Such 
beings do not, and cannot, love their homes or their 
country nobly. To love nobly in our homes, in our 
circle, or in our country, we must love them in their 
highest relations. The husband does not love his wife 
truly until he loves more in her than the wife ; until he 
loves her, not merely as his, but as herself; not merely 
as a pleasant companion, but as a spiritual agent ; un- 
til he recognizes in her, and reverences, an immortal 
humanity. A man does not truly love his child, his 
friend, his brothers, his compatriots until he discerns 
in them the claims of that great nature on which God 
has stamped the image of his divinity. This will 
enlighten and dignify his affections ; it will raise them 
up from simple instincts into exalted moral feelings ; 
and, while it guides him wisely towards those to whom 
he is attached, it will guide him to be kindly and 
friendly towards all besides. 

The philanthropic sentiment does not set aside any 
other, and it does not take the place of any other. 
It does not abrogate, and it cannot replace, the domes- 
tic sentiment. This is too closely inwrought with every 
instinct of the heart, too deeply imbedded in its earliest 
feelings, to have its impressions effaced by remote con- 
siderations or to have its want supplied by general 
principles. Nor can the patriotic sentiment, more than 
the domestic, be abrogated or replaced by the philan- 
thropic. The philanthropic sentiment does not abro- 
gate, and it cannot replace, the sentiment of duty. The 
qualities bf motive and of deed are all that conscience 
assumes to judge ; and conscience, as Bishop Butler 



THE PHILANTHROPIC SENTIMENT. 153 

finely observes, if it had the power as it has the right, 
would assuredly govern the world. The philanthropic 
sentiment does not abrogate, and it cannot replace, the 
sentiment of religion. The sentiment of religion tran- 
scends all relations of the visible. It reaches to those 
which belong to the unseen, the eternal, the absolute, 
and the perfect. We defend, then, no theoretical phi- 
lanthropy. We speak of that which grows out of the 
natural affections, and which, far from setting them 
aside, is only their full and adequate expression; we 
speak of that in which the best sentiments of the spir- 
itual and social being have their ultimate development 
and their noblest manifestation.. We do not deny that 
this, like other tendencies of our nature, may run into 
extravagance, and so become, even with the best desires, 
an uncompromising and intolerate enthusiasm. Grant- 
ing all this, are there no visionaries but those of 
philanthropy ? Has not selfishness, also, its Quixot- 
isms ? Has it not its airbuilt delusions, its treasuries 
of gilded clouds, its dream-formed plans, its passion- 
ate expectations, its unsubstantial hopes, its persuasions 
the most frenzied, and its anticipations the most ab- 
surd r Which has most crammed the asylums of the 
insane, which has caused the most maniacs — the en- 
thusiasm of humanity, or the enthusiasm of world- 
liness ? Which has wrecked more brains into hopeless 
madness -— the struggles for man, or the struggles for 
vanity ? 

But, after all, Christianity gives us the only practi- 
cable philanthropy ; for Christianity is the truest of all 
systems to the order of Nature. It associates moral 
principles as well as moral sentiments with the home 



154 ILLUSTRATIONS OP GENIUS. 

affections ; and thus it makes the nearest emotions, 
guides to the remotest duties. It honors every stage 
and every condition of humanity, the child as well as 
the patriarch, the beggar as the king, the savage as 
the sage ; it does not confine our kindred to the fire- 
side, but carries it out into the whole family of man ; 
and, lest the feeling of kindness should grow cold by 
such abstraction, it constantly recalls us to our firesider. 
again. Theorists, from Plato to Godwin, have beer, 
constructing systems for man's perfection ; but the sys- 
tems did not admit of even temporary application. An- 
cient systems have been long forgotten, and the au- 
thors of those more recent have seen the children of 
their fancy laid in the tomb of an early oblivion. These 
theories have left no impressions on society, they 
have established no institutions, they have rectified 
no errors, they have strengthened no principles, they 
have imparted no power ; they merely dazzled as they 
flashed along their narrow track, but gave no ample or 
steady illumination to the world. All abstract specu- 
lations, ancient or modern, Avhich have been de- 
signed for the moral government of man, have en- 
deavored to make him something else than that which 
he is and to procure some other end for him than that 
for which he seems fitted and created. Upon opposite 
principles, but with the same success, they have re- 
garded him as an angel, or a brute ; as a pure intel- 
lect, or as a passive machine ; as a child of peace, 
or a lover of destruction ; as a being of mere sensa- 
tion, or as one capable of an entire independence on 
the senses ; as a natural egotist, or a natural philan- 
thropist ; and he, the mean while, stood unmoved by 



THE PHILANTHROPIC SENTIMENT. 155 

any of their systems, and equally distant from them all. 
Men pretended in these schemes to aim at universal 
peace, happiness, and perfection ; they would render 
their kind blessed without laying hold on those affec- 
tions and faculties in the progress and cultivation of 
which their felicity consists ; they would render them 
perfect by destroying their nearest relationships, by 
blighting all that enlightens and consoles, by con- 
verting all the intimate charities of life into joyless 
generalities. They pretended to build up universal 
benevolence on the ruins of domestic love ; to give 
goodness a wider freedom by cutting its nearest ties ; 
to open fuller channels of virtue by drying up all its 
immediate fountains ; and, having thus severed man's 
soul from home, from brethren, from country, and from 
heaven, they congratulate him on his victory over 
prejudice ; they congratulate him on his extent of do- 
minion when all is desolation ; on his fraternity when 
all are strangers ; on his wisdom when he believes 
nothing and nothing is left him to believe ; they con- 
gratulate him on his grandeur when there is no love 
in the present and no hope in the future ; they con- 
gratulate him on his emancipation from the bondage 
of custom and superstition when they have delivered 
him into the glorious liberty of a universe where there 
is no Deity, hut where all is death. A generation not 
far separated from our own saw an attempt to reduce 
such doctrines to practice. It commenced with a declara- 
tion of the widest philanthropy ; we know in what it 
ended. Calling themselves prophets of liberty, the 
men who made this attempt became tyrants and anar- 
chists ; they substituted abstract maxims for homeborn 



156 ILLirSTBATIONS OF GENIUS. 

feelings ; they substituted pagan fables for evangelical 
revelations ; they endeavored to repeal the natural and 
the religious affections ; they endeavored to reduce 
their atrocious theories to fact ; but, while they urged 
on their plans of universal welfare, nations stood aghast 
in terror at a mission of massacre preached in the roar of 
the cannon, sealed with the baptism of fire and of blood. 
The regenerators, nothing daunted, swept along in their 
apostleship of lust and carnage ; onward and onward 
they continued, growing wilder in their progress ; hope 
fled from before and desolation followed them ; on- 
ward still they kept until their destiny was complete, 
until they perfected an example that history might 
record for an everlasting warning. If these preach- 
ers of philanthropy did not establish a blissful mil- 
lennium on a godless and homeless earth under a fa- 
therless heaven, in the midst of graves, among tombs 
inscribed with the epitaph, " Death an eternal sleep ^^^ 
they gave to the world such a spectacle of sensuality 
and slaughter as the world, we trust, will not be in 
haste to copy. 



MUSIC. 

The mere capacity in man of perceiving sound ren- 
ders the musical element a necessity in nature and in 
life. Discord, as a permanent state, is as inconceivable 
as a permanent state of chaos. The combinations of 
sounds, therefore, in the audible creation, if not all in 
detail musical, are pervaded by the musical element. 
No ear is insensible to the music of the air in the 
branches of a tree ; to the groaning of it in the hollow 
cave ; to its whistle in the grass, or to its spirit voices 
in a stormy night around the dwelling. No ear is in- 
sensible to the trickling melody of the stream, to the 
deep song of the river, to the solemn anthem of the 
torrent, to the eternal harmonies of the ocean. Birds 
are peculiarly the musicians of the animal world. But 
how skilful and how rich their music is, we must learn, 
not from the printed page, but in the sunny grove. 
Though other creatures have not, as birds, the gift of 
song, yet are they not unmusical or without their 
parts in the mighty orchestra of living nature. Mu- 
sical sounds are grateful to the sense ; and all beings 
that hear enjoy and need them. In music, man has 
a common medium of sympathy with his fellow-ani- 
mals. The charger prances to the sounds that swell 
the heart of his master ; for he, too, has a heart 

(1573 



158 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

whicli they can enter and dilate. A melody can 
soothe the lion's rage. The elephant treads delighted 
to the measure of the band. The dog bays gladness 
to the shepherd's flute. The cow stands in placid rap- 
ture while the milkmaid sings. Man is scarcely ever 
so rude as to be beyond the reach of music. It was a 
myth, containing as much truth as beauty, that feigned 
Apollo with his lyre as the early tamer of wild men. 
If music is the first influence which the race feels, it is 
also the first which the individual feels. The infant 
opens its intelligence and love to the mother's song as 
much as to the mother's face. The voice, even more than 
the look, is the primitive awakener of the intellect and 
heart. Every mother ought to sing. A song will out- 
live all sermons in the memory. Let memories that 
begin life have songs that last for life. 

As a sensation, music has power. A little maid 
I have known, who would sit on her cricket by her 
father's knee until he had read the whole of Chris- 
tabel, of which she did not know the meaning of a 
line. It was melodious to her ear, and merely in its 
music there was enchantment to her infant spirit. The 
songs which primitive people sing, in which they 
have their best social interchange, are frequently poor 
in diction and bald in sentiment. It is the music that 
gives the words a life ; and this life can transfuse en- 
ergetic inspiration into the meanest words. Early 
melodies are, of necessity, most simple ; they are the 
instincts seeking to put themselves into measured 
sound, yet with little to fill the ear, and less to reach 
the mind. Nevertheless, they are good for the mind 
and pleasant to the ear. A rude musical sensation is of 



MUSIC. 159 

value ; of how much more value is a refined musical sen- 
sation ! But a musical sensation is of its very nature a 
refined one. It is among the purest of sensations. It 
may, indeed, be associated with coarse and base emo- 
tion : the base emotion, however, is not in itself ; it is 
in the imagination or the word — music simply, as mu- 
sic presents nothing to the sense that is either coarse or 
base. The conception is from the mind to music, not 
from music to the mind. Speaking of music as a sen- 
sation, I speak relatively ; for to man there is no mu- 
sic without soul. In music soul and sense both mingle 
and become one in its inspired sound. 

Yet the least part of music is the mere sensation ; it 
is not on the ear, but on the heart, that its finest spirit 
dwells. There are the living chords which it puts in 
motion, and in whose vibration it has the echoes of its 
tones. The heart, after ail, is the instrument with 
which the musician has to deal. He must under- 
stand that from its lowest note to the top of its com- 
pass. The true test of music is the amount of feeling 
it contains ; the true criterion of a love for music is 
the capacity to appreciate feeling in music. Music 
properly is the language of emotion ; it is the lan- 
guage of the heart ; its grammar, its rhetoric, its elo- 
quence, its oratory are of the heart. The evidence of 
its power is in the calm or the quivering pulsation. 
Feeling in music is a memory, a sympathy, an im- 
pulse. Nothing can recall with such vividness as mu- 
sic can a past emotion, a departed state of mind. 
Words are but the history of a by-gone thought ; music 
is its presence. All our profoundest feelings are in 
their nature lyrical. Whatever most deeply afiects us, 



160 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

we do, in some way, link to tune, or they are by tune 
awakened. The feelings sing of themselves and make 
an orchestra of the brain. Persons utterly incapable 
of putting the simplest combination of sounds musi- 
cally together will make melody in their hearts of the 
reminiscences that strongly move them. And these 
will commonly be sad, as all is that is connected with 
the past ; sad, however, with various degrees of inten- 
sity — some will be but calm regrets, others dirges and 
requiems. Therefore it is that the most affecting melo- 
dies belong to the past — to the past in the life of a 
man, to the past in the life of a nation. Such melo- 
dies come not from prosperity or power. They come 
from those who have missed a history or whose history 
is over. Such melodies are voices of sadness, the 
yearnings over what might have been but was not, 
the regret for what has been but will never be again. 
And thus, too, it is with the most affecting eloquence. 
That which agitates the breast with force resistless is 
the word which is fraught with the passions of its sor- 
row. Life in power is action ; life in memory is elegy 
or eloquence. A nation, like a man, dreams its life 
again ; and until life is gone or changed it soliloquizes 
or sings its dreams. The music of memory lives in every 
man's experience ; and the excellence of it is, that it 
binds itself only to our better feelings. It is the ex- 
cellence of our nature, also, that only such feelings 
have spontaneous memories. The worst man does not 
willingly recall his bad feelings ; and, if he did, he could 
not wed them to a melody. Hatred, malice, vengeance, 
envy have, to be sure, their proper expressions in the 
lyric drama ; but of themselves they are not musical 



MUSIC. 161 

and by themselves they could not be endured. It is 
not so with the kind emotions. They are in them- 
selves a music ; and memory delights in the sweetness 
of their intonations. Love, affection, friendship, pa- 
triotism, pity, grief, courage, whatever generously 
swells the heart or tenderly subdues it or purely 
elevates it, are of themselves, of their own attuning 
and accordant graciousness, of a musical inspiration. 
With what power will a simple strain pierce the si- 
lence of the breast and in every note break the slum- 
ber of a thousand thoughts ! It is a positive "necro- 
mancy. Faces long in the clay bloom as they did in 
youth. An inward ear is opened through the outward, 
and voices of other times are speaking ; and words 
which you had heard before come to your soul, and 
they are pleasant in this illusive echo. Your spirit is 
lost in the flight of days and insensible to the interval 
of distance ; it is back in other hours and dwells in 
other scenes. Such are the mysterious linkings by 
which music interlaces itself with our feelings, and so 
becomes an inseparable portion of our sympathy. But 
sympathy exists only when music answers to the spirit. 
Give not a merry carol to a heavy heart, although you 
may give a grave strain to a light one. Music, as 
rightly used, is, as some one calls it, " the medicine of 
an afflicted mind." Joy is heightened by exultant 
strains ; but grief is eased only by low ones. " A 
sweet, sad measure " is the balm of a wounded spirit. 
Music lightens toil. The sailor pulls more cheerily for 
his song ; and even the slave feels in singing that he is 
a man. But in other forms of labor we miss, in our 
country, the lyric feeling. Most of our work is done 
11 



162 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

in silence. We hear none of those songs at the milk- 
ing hour which renders that hour in Europe so rich in 
pastoral and poetical associations. We hear no plough- 
man's whistle ringing over the field with a resonant 
hilarity. We have no choruses of reapers and no mer- 
ry harvest feasts ; but, if such things cannot be nat- 
urally, it is vain to wish for them, and it may be even 
useless to mention them. Better things, perhaps, are 
in their place — grave meditation and manly thought ; 
and I merely allude to them as elements that accord 
pleasingly with certain modes of life in countries to 
whose habits and history they are native. Music in 
social intercourse is a fine awakener of sympathies and 
a fine uniter of them. A violin or a piano is often not 
less needed to soothe the ruffled spirit of a company 
than the harp of David vv^as to calm down the fiend in 
the turbulent breast of Saul. Music, as we see in the 
customs of all nations, is used as an antidote to the 
sense of danger as well as a stimulus to the passion 
of combat. And, as embattled hosts move with meas- 
ured tramp to the field of death, music is the magic 
that is trusted to charm away fear or to call up cour- 
age. 

Largely are men indebted even to the music of bal- 
lads and of songs. Difficult it would be to measure 
the good which such music has done to mankind. To 
multitudes in days of yore songs were the only litera- 
ture ; and by the bards they had all their learning. 
Songs were their history, their romance, their tragedy, 
their comedy, their fireside eloquence, giving utter- 
ance and perpetuity to sacred afiections and to noble 
thoughts, and keeping alive a spirit of humanity in 



MUSIC. 163 

both the vassal and the lord. Men have not yet ceased 
to need such influences, nor have such influences lost 
their power. They still add purer brightness to the 
joys of the young, and are a solace to the memory of 
age. They are still bonds of a generous communion. 
They banish strangeness from the rich man's hall ; they 
add refinement to the rich man's banquet ; they are joy 
in the poor man's holiday ; they express lovingness in 
the poor man's feast. What so aids beneficent Nature 
as such music does to remove barbarism and to inspire 
kindness ? How dear amidst all the toils of earth are 
the songs which were music to our infant ears, the 
songs of our hearth and of our home, the songs which 
were our childhood's spells, a blessedness upon our 
mother's lips, a rapture and delight ! What solaces 
the exile while it saddens him ? What is it that 
from the ends of ocean turns him with wistful im- 
agination to the star which overhangs his father- 
land ? What is it that brings the tear to his eye, and 
the memory of other days, and the vision in the far-off 
west ; that annihilates years and distance, and gives 
him back his country and gives him back his youth ? 
Song, inspired song, domestic song, national song — 
song that carries ideal enthusiasm into rudest places 
with many a tale of marvel and magnanimity ; of her- 
oism in the soldier and sanctity in the saint ; of con- 
stancy in love and of bravery in war. 

Man is a social being ; unselfish society is the har- 
mony of humanity ; loving interchange is the music of 
life, the music which lifts the attuned soul above dis- 
cordant passions and petty cares ; and song is the voice 
in which that music breathes. These are the strains 



164 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

that liave memories in them of all that true souls deem 
worthy of life or death — the purities of their homes, 
the sacredness of their altars, the hopes of their poster- 
ity ; all for which martyrs suffer ; all for which patri- 
ots bleed ; all that gives millions a single wish and a 
single will ; all that makes the cry of liberty as the 
trump of judgment, and the swords of freeman as the 
bolts of heaven. Glorious names, and glorious deeds, 
and honorable feelings are always allied to the lyric 
spirit. The independence of a country may seem to 
be utterly lost ; the ruin of a nation may appear decid- 
ed ; indeed, its external destiny may be accomplished ; 
but the character of a people is never absolutely de- 
graded until the lyric fire is dead upon the altar and 
the lyric voice is heard no longer in the temple. 

Music is not exhausted in expressing feeling, though 
some persons are so constituted as not beyond this to 
understand or to enjoy it. But music of more profound 
combination is not on this account without meaning 
and without value. The higher forms of music, like 
the higher forms of poetry, must of course, if tested 
by mere instinct, seem remote and complicated. Mu- 
^ic, too, is susceptible of more multiplied combinations 
than poetry, and, without the restraints of arbitrary 
signs and definite ideas, can expatiate in the region of 
pure imagination. In the true sense of the word it is 
infinite : not bound to form, not bound to color, not 
bound to speech, it is as unlimited as the capacity of 
the soul to exist in undejinahle states of emotional be- 
ing ; and into these it can throw the soul with incon- 
ceivable rapidity of change. The great master even 
of a single instrument appears, indeed, a wizard. He 



MUSIC. 165 

seems, in truth, to be the only artist to whom the des- 
ignation of wizard can with any correctness be applied. 
Men of other genius may be creators ; but the musician 
is the wizard. His instrument is a talisman ; it is full 
of conjurations ; out from it he draws his witchery ; he 
puts his spell upon all around him ; he chains them in 
the slavery of delight ; and he is the only despot that 
rules over willing captives. No other power on the 
imagination is so complete, so uncontrollable. The 
fiction or the poem you can lay aside ; the picture or 
statue moves you but calmly ; the actor is at the mer- 
cy of an accident ; th<3 orator may fail by reason of 
your opposition to his sentiments or opposition to his 
person ; but the musician draws you from every thing 
which can counteract his charm ; and, once within 
his circle, you have no escape from his power. Emo- 
tional conceptions, solemn, gay, pathetic, impassioned, 
are as souls in all his sounds. But, in the case 
of an executive musician, the art seems incarnate in 
the artist. We associate the personality of the ar- 
tist with the effects of his art. We are not yet with- 
in the limitless domain of imaginative music. The 
great instrumentalist is, indeed, a wizard, a cunning 
necromancer ; but he is before us while he work& his 
spells ; and, though we cannot resist the enchanter, we 
hehold him. In a great composer there is a higher po- 
tency, and it is one that is not seen. The action of 
his spirit on our spirits, though exercised by means of 
intermediate agents, is yet that of an invisible incan- 
tation. The great composer is an imperial magician, 
the sovereign of genii and the master of wizards. He 
is a Prospero, and mttsic is his enchanted island. 



166 ILLUSTKATIONS OE GENIUS. 

The creative musician, and the region in which he 
dwells, can have no analogy more correct than that 
presented to us in Shakspeare's extraordinary play of 
the Tempest. There we have the loud-resounding 
sea ; at one moment the sun bright in the clear sky, 
at another hidden by the mist or breaking through the 
bloodred cloud ; now the heavens are full of stars, and 
in an instant they are thick with gloom ; the elements 
gather into masses, they clash together, and the thun- 
der and the waves fill up the chorus. Then the day 
dawns softly and the morning breaks into summer 
songs. Caves are there and pleasant dells ; solitudes 
are there, dark and lonely ; spots "V^eautiful as well as 
terrible ; barren and blasted heaths, whei^ goblins hold 
their revels ; and labyrinthian walks, where sweet 
hearts, not unwilling, lose themselves and linger. The 
earth, the atmosphere, shore, stream, grove, are filled 
with preternatural movements, with sweet voices and 
strange sounds. There are Ariel melodies, there are 
Caliban groanings ; there are the murmurings of manly 
passions and the whisperings of maiden love ; there are 
bacchanalian jovialities, high and mysterious mono- 
logues, fanciful and fairy ditties, the full swellings of 
excited hearts, and the choral transports of all Nature, 
made living and made lyrical. But the Prospero who 
rules in this island-dwells in a lonely cell, and yet com- 
mands all the voices of the universe to do his bidding:. 
Have I not, by this analogy, described a grand im- 
aginative composer ? Without intending it, I have 
described Beethoven. I speak, I admit, only as one of 
the appreciating vulgar, as one of the impressible ig- 
norant ; I am able only to express a sensation, not to 



MUSIC. 167 

pronounce a judgment. In listening to Beethoven's 
music there is a delight, for which, no doubt, the 
learned artist can give a reason. I know nothing of 
art, and with me the listening is an untutored, a wild, 
an almost savage joy or sorrow, or a mixture of emo- 
tions that cannot be defined. The music of Beetho- 
ven, if I can judge from the little that I have heard of 
it, is unearthly ; but the unearthliness of this music 
is of a compound nature. Like Spenser's, Beetho- 
ven's imagination is unearthly ; and, like Spenser's, it 
is unearthly in the supernaturally beautiful. Like 
Milton's imagination, also, Beethoven's is unearthly ; 
but here it is unearthly in the mysterious and the sol- 
emn. The union of these elements in the wholeness of 
Beethoven's genius has given to us that singular, that 
most original music which seems to belong to the ideal 
region, that Eastern fancy has peopled with genii and 
fairies. What a wonderful thing is a symphony of Beet- 
hoven's ! But who can describe it in either its con- 
struction or its effects ? You might as well attempt to 
describe by set phrases the raptures of St. Paul or the 
visions of the Apocalypse. It always seems the utterance 
of a mighty trance, of a mysterious dream, of a solemn 
ecstasy. The theme, even the most simple, so simple 
that a child, as it might appear, could have fashioned it, 
is one, however, that genius of a marvellous peculiarity 
only could have discovered — a genius that worked 
and lived amidst the most ideal analogies by which 
sounds are related to emotions. And this unearthly 
theme is thrown at once into an ocean of orchestral 
harmony, and this orchestral harmony is as unearthly 
as the theme. Thrown upon the orchestra, it seems to 



168 ILLTJSTEATIONS OF GENIUS. 

break, to divide itself, to scatter itself upon the waves 
of an enchanted sea in a multitude of melodies. It 
seems as a tune played by a spirit minstrel, on a 
summer night, in the glade of a lonely wood, to which 
all the genii of music answer in choruses of holy, sad, 
enchanting modulation. 

And of Mozart, — what shall we say of him — of 
Mozart, less only than Beethoven in those strains 
which linger amidst remote associations, but versatile 
beyond most composers in the romance and reality of 
the comic and the tragic in actual life ? If ever a gen- 
ius lived with which all its work was play, that genius 
was the genius of Mozart. Constantly he made the 
merest play of genius. At ten years old he could as- 
tonish the most critical of musical audiences in Paris ; 
and, before their rapture had approached within many 
degress of moderation, he would be romping in the 
crowd of his companions. Nor was it different in his 
maturity. He could compose a piece in which he 
was himself to take a part. He would distribute the 
score perfectly arranged for the several performers. As 
they played he would turn over page after page along 
with them, always in the spirit of the music and its 
harmony ; but the emperor, looking over his shoulder, 
could see that not a note had he written down. Mo- 
zart seemed to combine in his genius all the sweetness 
of Italy with all the depth of Germany. But on these 
themes I have no authority to speak. All I can say is, 
that what I have heard of his compositions, and most 
of what I have learned of his life, have led me to think 
of him with admiration as a musician and with affec- 
tion as a man. 



MUSIC. 169 

Music, it is sometimes said, is not an intellectual 
art. What does this mean ? Does it mean that music 
employs no intellect in the artist and excites none in 
the hearer? The assertion in both cases is untrue. 
Music, as a study, must, I think, be profoundly intel- 
lectual. In the oldest universities it has always had a 
place among the abstract sciences. But, considered as 
an enjoyment, considered in relation to the hearer, we 
should first need to settle what we understand by an 
intellectual enjoyment. To work a problem in alge- 
bra or to examine a question of theology may be each 
an intellectual pleasure ; but the pleasure, it is mani- 
fest, is in each case very different. These both, it is 
true, agree in taxing the reasoning faculty ; but is 
nothing intellectual but that which formally taxes this 
faculty ? Is nothing intellectual but that which in- 
volves syllogism, but that which implies demonstra- 
tion or induction? Prayer is not intellectual if we 
identify intellectuality with logic ; and, if we do this, it 
is not intellectual to feel the merits of a picture, but 
peculiarly so to understand the proportions of its frame. 
According to such a theory it is intellectual to analyze 
with Aristotle ; but it is not so to burn and to soar 
with Plato. To speculate with Jeremy Bentham is in- 
tellectual ; but it is not so to be enraptured by the di- 
vine song of Milton. Assertions which lead to such 
conclusions must be radically false. Whatever puts 
man's spiritual powers into action is intellectual. The 
kind of action will, of course, be ever according to 
the subject and the object. The intellectuality of a 
statesman is not that of a bard ; the intellectuality 
which concocts an act of Parliament is not that which 



170 ILLirSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

composes a " Song of the Bell." Music is neither in- 
ductive nor ratiocinative. It is an art ; that is, it is 
an inward law realized in outward fact. In this mu- 
sic agrees with all arts ; for all arts are but the out- 
ward actualities of inward laws. But some of these 
are for utility, others for delight. Music is of those 
arts which spring from the desire for enjoyment and 
gratify it. It bears the soul away into the region of 
the infinite and moves it with conceptions of ex- 
haustless possibilities of beauty. If ideas, feelings, 
imaginations are intellectual, then is music ; if that 
which can excite, combine, modify, elevate, — memo- 
ries, feelings, imagination, — is intellectual, then music 
is intellectual. 

An art which, like music, is the offspring of passion 
and emotion, could not but take a dramatic form. The 
lyrical drama, secular and sacred, civilized humanity 
could not but produce. Nothing is more natural than 
that the gayety and grief of the heart should seek the 
intense and emphatic expression which music can af- 
ford. It would, indeed, be extraordinary if a creature 
like man, so covetous of excitement, so desirous of 
varying his sensations, did not press into his service, 
wherever it could be used, an art which has no other 
equal to it for excitement and variety. The opera, 
both comic and tragic, is a genuine production of this 
desire. The burlesque, the odd, the merry, the ab- 
surd, and, still more, pity, love, jealousy, vengeance, 
despair, have their music in j;he rudest states of socie- 
ty ; it is only in the order of things that they should 
in cultivated states of society have a cultivated music. 
Such music, as a matter of course, would connect 



MUSIC. 171 

itself with a story, a plot, with incident, character, 
scenery, costume, and catastrophe. It would thus be- 
come dramatic. Thus it has become ; and, as such, it 
has a range as ample as that of human life, as deep as 
human passion, as versatile as the human fancy and 
the human will. Hence we have the opera. The opera 
is that form which the drama assumed among a people 
musically organized — among a people whose love of 
music was therefore intense, constitutional, and ex- 
pansive. But no art remains within the limits of its 
native space ; and the opera is now as extensive as civ- 
ilization - — as extensive, certainly, as modern civiliza- 
tion. The ballad is the first comedy or tragedy. There 
are germs in the words of the ballad for the genius of 
Shakspeare — there are germs in the air of it for the 
genius of Rossini. Many object to the opera ; first, 
they say, it is expensive. All our amusements are ex- 
pensive — expensive as they ought not to be — expen- 
sive as they would not be with a higher and purer social 
culture. Artistic amusements are expensive, especial- 
ly, by the want of taste which hinders the many from 
sharing in them — -by the want of taste which makes 
expense itself distinction. True taste coincides with 
true feeling ; true feeling delights in beauty, as it de- 
lights in goodness, for its own sake ; and true feeling 
being as wide as nature and humanity, the more widely 
its delight is shared the greater its own enjoyment. 
Were there among the people a diffusive taste for ele- 
vated music, we cannot but feel that music could be 
cheap as well as noble. But, secondly, many say that 
the opera is unnatural. It is absurd, they quizzically 
aver, that persons should sing their love talk, their 



172 ILLUSTKATIQNS OF GENIUS. 

madness, their despair, &c., and grieve or laugh, die 
or be married, in sharps or flats, in major or minor. 
And yet this is exactly what Nature does. Nature sings 
all its stronger emotions. The moment expression 
becomes excited it has rhythm, it has cadence ; and 
the tune of Rossini is nearer to instinct than the 
blank verse of Shakspeare. Who will say that genu- 
ine passion is not in this wonderful blank verse ? But 
who is it that could impromptu speak it ? So in the 
tones and harmonies of music. In both Nature is 
carried into the region of Art, out from the region of 
the actual ; and within the region of Art the musical ut- 
terance of Nature is no more strange than the poetical 
utterance of Nature. The moral view of the opera I do 
not here pretend to deal with. My purpose is to speak 
on music as an element of social culture ; and it is not 
beyond the range of possibility that beautiful truths 
can be united dramatically to beautiful tones. If they 
cannot, then society has an immense loss ; and if a no- 
ble story cannot be told by music, cannot be told to 
a moral purpose, then music ceases to be an art, as it 
has always been considered as associated with the di- 
vinest impulses of our nature. The abuses of which 
the opera is susceptible are the abuses of which every 
form of art is susceptible. The artist stands, he has 
ever stood, upon a point between the human and di- 
vine. He may carry his art into gross sensualities of 
the human or into lofty spiritualities of the divine. 
With the purification of society we shall have the puri- 
fication of art and of the artist ; and, therefore, I can 
see no reason why the opera might not be made effec- 
tive in the best culture of social humanity. The lyrical 



MUSIC. 173 

expression of humanity is not less human than it is 
religious. 

The sacred lyrical drama, or oratorio, seems to be a 
remnant of the old mysteries. In those old mysteries 
a scriptural subject was exhibited to the people in a 
theatrical manner. The scriptural subject is all that 
remains of the old mystery in the modern oratorio. 
Stage, scenery, costume have departed, and music takes 
their place. Music, therefore, in the oratorio, must, 
by its own power, indicate character, sentiment, pas- 
sion ; it must unite grandeur and diversity with unity 
of spirit ; it must unite them with unity of expression. 
Yet even the oratorio has not escaped objection. But, 
if it has been wrongly attacked, it has been as unwisely 
defended. What, it is triumphantly asked, can in- 
spire deeper devotion, more fervent piety, than the sa- 
cred composition of Handel ? The mistake of the 
artist on this side of the question has its only meas- 
ure in the mistake of the ascetic on the other. The 
strains even of Handel may be in unison with the 
highest and purest aspirations of the mind ; but in his 
divinest dramas they are not, of themselves, devotion. 
But if high music confers a pleasure that harmonizes 
with the mind's best faculties ; if it prepares the mind's 
best faculties for their best exercise ; if by lifting the 
mind up into the sphere of great emotions from that 
of mean ones, if by withdrawing it from attention to 
selfish desires, it carries it into lofty thought, — music 
exercises for the mind, even in the temple, a sacred 
power, though its power should yet only be artistic. 
No mind, for instance, can be in a low or degraded 
condition while it is in sympathy with the pure and 



174 



ILLUSTEATIONS OF GENIUS. 



delectable genius of Haydn. No mind can have com- 
muned with, him through his oratorio of the Crea- 
tion ; can have drunk in its gladdening hymns of 
praise, that seem to sparkle with the light which they 
celebrate ; its anthems of holy exultation such as the 
sons of God might have shouted, breathing the young 
soul of goodness and beauty, — no mind, I say, can be 
in such communion, and for the time be otherwise 
than transported beyond all that can degrade or can 
defile. But Handel excites a profounder sentiment. 
He is not so cheerful as Haydn. He could not be ; 
for this he is too massive and austere. He does not, 
like Haydn, lead the mind out to Nature ; he turns it in 
upon itself. Not loveliness, but mysteries, make the 
spirit of his music. We find in Haydn the pic- 
turesqueness and the buoyancy of the Catholic wor- 
ship; in Handel, the sombre, the inquiring, the med- 
itative thoughtfulness of the Protestant faith. By 
Haydn's Creation we are charmed and elated; by 
Handel's Messiah we are moved with an overcom- 
ing sense of power. Though nothing can surpass 
the sweetness of Handel's melodies, yet, interspersed 
amidst such masses of harmony, they seem like hymns 
amidst the billows of the ocean or songs among the 
valleys of the Alps. Handel's genius was made for 
a subject that placed him in the presence of eternity 
and the universe. His moods and movements are too 
vast for the moods and movements of common interests 
or the common heart. They require the spaces of 
worlds ; they require interests coincident with man's 
destiny and with man's duration. Though Han- 
del's airs in the Messiah are of sweetest and gen- 



MUSIC. 175 

tlest melody, they have majesty in their sweetness 
and their gentleness. We can associate them with 
no event lower than that with which they are con- 
nected. In such tones we can conceive the Savior's 
birth celebrated in the song of angels — in such tones 
we can fancy the Redeemer welcomed in hosannas by 
those who ignorantly dragged him afterwards to Cal- 
vary. And then the plaintiveness of Handel in the 
Messiah has its true horizon only in that which girds 
the immortal. It is not simply plaintive ; it is mys- 
teriously awful. It is not a grief for earthly man ; it is 
a grief for Him who bore the griefs of all men ; for 
Him who carried our sorrows, who was wounded for our 
transgressions, who was bruised for our iniquities, who 
was oppressed and afflicted, and who bore the chastise- 
ment of our peace. It is not a grief in which any 
common spirit dare complain ; it is fit only for Him 
who had sorrows to which no man's sorrows were like. 
It does not cause us to pity, but to tremble ; it does 
not move us to weeping, because there lie beneath it 
" thoughts which are too deep for tears." And then, in 
unison with this dread and solemn pathos is the sub- 
dued but mighty anguish of the general harmony. 
When the victory is proclaimed — the victory over the 
grave, the victory over death, the victory in which 
mortality is swallowed up of life — we are lost in the 
glory of a superhuman chorus ; our imagination breaks 
all local bounds ; we fancy all the elements of creation, 
all glorified and risen men, all the hosts of heaven's 
angels united in this exultant anthem. Handel truly 
is the Milton of music. 

The grandest office of music, however, is that in 



176 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

wHcli, no doubt, it originated ; that in whicli, early, it 
had its first culture ; in which, latest, it has its best - — 
I mean its office in religion. In the sanctuary it was 
born, and in the service of God it arose with a sub- 
limity with which it could never have been inspired in 
the service of pleasure. More assimilated than any 
other art to the spiritual nature of man, it affords a 
medium of expression the most congenial to that na- 
ture. Compared with tones that breathe out from a 
profound, a spiritually musical soul, how poor is any 
allegory which painting can present or that symbol 
can indicate ! The soul is invisible ; its emotions 
admit no more than itself of shape or limitation. The 
religious emotions cannot always have even verbal ut- 
terance. They often seek an utterance yet nearer to 
the infinite ; and such they find in music. You cannot 
delineate a feeling ; at most, you can but suggest it by 
delineation. But in music you can, by intonation, 
directly give the feeling. Thus related to the unseen 
soul, music is a voice for faith, which is itself the 
realization of things not seen. And waiting as the 
soul is amidst troubles and toils, looking upward from 
the earth and onward out of time for a better world 
or a purer life, in its believing and glad expectancy 
music is the voice of its hope. In the depression and 
despondency of conviction, in the struggles of repent- 
ance, in the consolations and rejoicing of forgiveness, 
in the wordless calm of internal peace music answers 
to the mood and soothingly breaks the dumbness of 
the heart. For every charity that can sanctify and 
bless humanity music has its sacred measures ; and 
well does goodness merit the richest harmony of sound, 



h 



MUSIC. 177 

that is itself the richest harmony of heaven. Sor- 
row, also, has its consecrated melody. The wounded 
spirit and the broken heart are attempered and as- 
suaged by the murmurings of divine song. A plain- 
tive hymn soothes the departing soul ; it mingles with 
weeping in the house of death ; it befits the solemn 
ritual of the grave. The last supper was closed with 
a hymn ; and many a martyr for Him who went from 
that supper to his agony made their torture jubilant 
in songs of praise. 

An essay equal to the subject on the vicissitudes and 
varieties of sacred music would be one of the most in- 
teresting passages in the history of art. In their long 
wanderings to the land of promise sacred music was 
among the hosts of Israel ; and in that great temple 
of Nature, floored by the desert and roofed by the sky, 
they chanted the song of Miriam and of Moses. It 
was in their Sabbath meetings ; it resounded with the 
rejoicings of their feasts and with the gladness of their 
jubilees. When Solomon built a house to the Lord 
it was consecrated with cymbals, and psalteries, and 
harps, with the sounds of trumpets and the swell of 
voices. As long as the temple stood music hallowed 
its services ; and that music must have been supremely 
grand which suited the divine poetry of the inspired 
and kingly lyrist. Israel was scattered ; the temple 
was no more. Silence and desolation dwelt in the 
place of the sanctuary. Zion heard no longer the an- 
thems of her Levites. A new word that was spoken 
first in Jerusalem had gone forth among the nations ; 
and that, too, had its music. At first it was a whisper 
among the lowly in the dwellings of the poor ; stealthily 
12 



178 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

it afterwards was murmured in the palace of tlie Caesars. 
In the dead night, in the depths of the catacombs, 
it trembled in subdued melodies filled with the 
love of Jesus. At length the grand cathedral arose 
and the stately spire ; courts and arches echoed and 
pillars shook with the thunder of the majestic organ; 
choirs, sweetly attuned, joined their voices in all the 
moods and measures of the religious heart, in its most 
exalted, most profound, most intense experience put 
into lyrical expression. I know that piety may re- 
ject, may repel, this form of expression ; still these sub- 
lime ritual harmonies cannot but give to the spirit that 
sympathizes with them the sense of a mightier being. 
But sacred music has power without a ritual. In the 
rugged hymn which connects itself, not alone with im- 
mortality, but also -with the memory of brave saints, 
there is power. There is power in the hymn in which 
our fathers joined. Grand were those rude psalms 
which once arose amidst the solitudes of the Alps. 
Grand were those religious songs sung in brave devo- 
tion by the persecuted Scotch in the depths of their 
moors and their glens. The Hundredth Psalm, rising 
in the fulness of three thousand voices up into the clear 
sky, broken among rocks, prolonged and modulated 
through valleys, softened over the surface of mountain- 
guarded lakes, had a grandeur and a majesty con- 
trasted with which mere art is poverty and meanness. 
And, while thus reflecting on sacred music, we think 
with wonder on the Christain church, on its power and 
on its compass. Less than nineteen centuries ago its 
first hymn was sung in an upper chamber of Jerusalem, 
and those who sung it were quickly scattered. And 



i 



MUSIC. 179 

now the Christian hymn is one that never ceases, one 
that is heard in every tongue ; and the whisper of 
that upper chamber is now a chorus that fills the 
world. 

Music is an essential element in social life and social 
culture ; and our times have few better movements than 
the increasing introduction of vocal music into popular 
education. The higher kinds of music might be in- 
cluded in all the higher kinds of education for men as 
well as for women. Milton so teaches in his great trac- 
tate ; and so the Greeks practised, in whose training no 
faculty was wasted or overlooked. The music which 
is now most wanted, however, is music for the common 
heart. If education will give us the taste for such 
music and give us the music, it will confer upon us a 
benefit, a blessing. It is not desired that music in the 
home or in the friendly circle should never wander 
out of the sphere of the home or the friendly circle ; 
only let not these spheres of feeling be without any 
strains peculiarly suitable to themselves. Let the 
theatre have its music, let the camp have its music, 
let the dance room have its music, let the church have 
its music ; but let the home and the friendly gathering 
also have their music. 

We have for the cultivated music of rare power 
and in great abundance ; but we need a music for the 
people ; and no music can be music for the people but 
that which answers to simple and direct emotion. It 
is a most important need. The music of the opera, 
granting it were ever so pure and had no resistance to 
encounter, can be had only in cities, and can never 
reach the scattered masses of the population. The 



180 ILLUSTKATIOKS OP GENIUS. 

music of the oratorio has a limitation even still more 
restricted. Popular music must be domestic, social 
music. We have it not; therefore we are a silent 
people, and our writings have no lyrical inspirations. 
The finer and deeper elements of popular life have no 
true medium of exposition. These subtile, delicate, 
wordless idealities of the soul, which the rudest have, 
are without music — that alone which can take them 
from the confining bosom and give them to the vital 
air. Our rural life is gladdened by no song, is the 
subject of no song ; and our social life is almost as si- 
lent as the rural. National music we have none ; and 
our political songs are generally a shame to doggerel 
and a libel upon tune. Complaining on the want of 
social and domestic music will not, I am aware, sup- 
ply it ; and yet it is no less a want. We want it on 
the summer's evening, when our work is done, to rest 
the spirit as we rest the body, and, while the eye is 
filled with visible beauty, to bring the soul into har- 
mony with invisible goodness. We want it in the win- 
ter's night, by the winter fire, to cheer us while the 
hours pass and to humanize in amusing us. We want 
it in our friendly reunions, not for delight alone, but 
also for charity and peace, to exclude the demon of 
idle or evil speaking and to silence the turbulence of 
polemical or political discussion. We want it in our 
churches. Christianity is the home feeling and the so- 
cial feeling made perfect. The music of it should be 
the home feeling and the social feeling consecrated. 
As it is, our Protestant churches at least have either a 
drawling psalmody with the monotony of a lullaby, or 
they have patches of selections that want unity, appro- 



MUSIC. 181 

priateness, or meaning. A music is wanted in our 
Protestant churches such as Christianity ought to have ; 
a music simple, yet grand ; varied, but not capricious ; 
gladsome with holy joy, not with irreverent levity ; not 
sentimental, yet tender ; solemn, but not depressing ; 
not intolerant to the beauties of art, and yet not scorn- 
ful of popular feeling. If a true and natural taste for 
music should spring up and be cultivated through the 
country, not in cities only, but in every village and 
district, it would be an auspicious phenomenon. It 
would break the dulness of our homes, it would bright- 
en the hour of our meetings, it would enliven our 
hospitality, and it would sublime our worship. 



THE COST OF A CULTIVATED MAN. 

" Each hon mot^^ says Goethe, " has cost me a 
purse of gold ; half a million of my own money, the 
fortune I inherited, my salary, and the large income 
derived from my writings for fifty years back have 
been expended to instruct me in what I know.'' This 
declaration was made by the poet in a conversation 
with his friend Eckerman. It is pregnant with in- 
struction. It is at once a lesson and a rebuke ; a les- 
son of diligence and modesty, a rebuke to superficial- 
ism and presumption. There is nothing that we seem 
to consider less than the mighty cost at which we 
have every thing — every thing in the order and the en- 
joyment of life, the commonest as well as the rarest. 
That I could Avrite these words, there was an infinite 
amount of expenditure in my favor. To say nothing 
of the sufiering, and toil, and thought, the ^visdom, and 
the heroism, and the martyrdom, which the civiliza- 
tion that surrounds me has cost^ the amount of care and 
labor by which I am supported is enormous ; nor less 
is that by which I am protected. The mere materials 
and implements which I use in writing are beyond my 
skill. Yet I will look upon a glorious piece of paint- 
ing, and take it perhaps as a thing of course. It pos- 
sibly comes not to my mind to think what years of prep- 

(182) 



THE COST OP A CULTIVATED MAN, 183 

aration it has exacted of the artist ; it may be that I 
fancy I am doing him compensating honor when I mark 
his name with some threadbare epithet or hail his work 
with some expletive interjection. But, if the truth is in 
me, I will not assume to be his judge ; I will gladly re- 
vere him as my benefactor. I turn over the pages of a 
profound or beautiful book ; my eye glides along the 
words ; I vaguely apprehend the purport of separate 
sentences ; but into the unity, or spirit, or power of 
the whole I have not entered ; possibly I have not the 
ability to enter. I close the volume ; and in a few 
brief moments, in a few crude words, I pronounce a 
judgment on it. The weakest sentence in the book 
I have not, perhaps, qualification to write ; I may want 
the sufficient inspiration, I may want the adequate 
learning, I may be incapable of the simple industry 
which the most subordinate portion of the work de- 
manded. Yet I fancy that I can measure it in the entire- 
ness of its execution and its plan. Even if I am qual- 
ified to read the book, and read it with sympathy, I 
shall still fail in estimating the expense to the writer 
at which it has been produced. But the expense in 
the production of the book is trifling ; the great ex- 
pense has been in the education of the author. I mean 
not, of course, the mere teaching of the writer by 
schools or reading, but that whole action on the man 
which prepares him for his agency in life as well as in 
art. The picture or the book is but little in com- 
parison with the cost of the author and the artist ; and 
both the artist and the author have their value in the 
man. The cost implied in the being of a cultivated 
man is the thought which the words of Goethe excited 



184 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

in my mind ; and out from this thought I will try to 
write. 

In such a calculation we must begin with what 
Nature supplies ; for this is necessarily the substance 
of all development and the subject of all culture. A 
fine thinker has observed that man is an expensive 
animal ; but man has an original and inherent worth, 
which constitutes the main value of whatever he 5e- 
comes, and which he retains even in his meanest and 
in his lowest state. To be a man, is to be the grandest 
being in the midst of creation ; for man is at once the 
epitome of Nature and its head. Base as man may some- 
times seem, and shocking and repulsive as in many con- 
ditions he is, the very abhorrence that we feel when thus 
we see him springs from our sense of the contrast be- 
tween his actual state and his divine possibilities. The 
contrast is apprehended whenever man is miserable 
and thought is present. The feeling of such contrast 
is the source of tragedy in letters, of philanthropy in 
sentiment, and of beneficence in action. This con- 
trast comes not to thought by elaborate analysis or by 
the consecutive inferences of logic ; it comes in imme- 
diate and sympathetic impulse ; and, when we behold 
any of our kind out of natural or moral harmony with 
our idea of immortal and intelligent existence, we be- 
hold them out of harmony with our idea of humanity. 
There is, then, a worth in man by reason of his mere 
humanity ; and this worth cannot be taken from him. 
It is independent of condition, and not in the power 
of fate. This worth is in a man even though he him- 
self may not know it or though another may not ap- 
prehend it or acknowledge it. If the consciousness has 



THE COST OF A CULTIVATED MAN. 185 

never been or has been but weakly felt, because a man's 
condition or fate has not been propitious, then condi- 
tion or fate has allowed him to be but imperfectly a 
man. Outward suffering, toil, and want are not to be 
compared with an insufficiency like this. The same 
fact is only differently stated when I say that he who 
cannot discern the worth of humanity in another can- 
not be noble in himself, but is of a narrow and a 
blinded life ; for, if the consciousness of such worth were 
in himself, in that consciousness would be included 
the recognition of a like worth in every man. The 
deepest curse in power and passion is their tendency to 
harden the soul to the common worth of humanity ; 
for it is in the sense of humanity's worth that justice, 
reverence, mercy have their inspiration ; it is the prin- 
ciple of moral universality, and without it education 
is contracted and liberty is selfish. True and liberal 
culture opens the mind more and more largely to the 
common worth of man. The apprehension of superior- 
ity in others, separate from the sublime worth that 
belongs to all, crushes independence ; such apprehen- 
sion of superiority in ourselves inspires arrogance ; in 
either case it is a littleness. The man who does not 
know that his power of life is by what he has in com- 
mon with men, not by that wherein he differs from 
them, has been wanting in the best conditions of a 
right culture, and exhibits the worst result of a bad 
one. The individual, in his utmost magnitude, is 
nothing as an isolated life ; it is only as he imhodies 
the instincts and experience of our common nature 
that he has spiritual size and spiritual vitality. The 
mind that is capacious and that has been wisely trained 
has extended its sympathies rather than sharpened its 



186 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS, 

criticism ; has acquired an aptitude for assimilation 
rather than a facility of rejection. Such a soul cannot 
have the temperament of scorn or contempt ; for scorn 
or contempt is foreign to the law of any noble nature. 
A noble nature is sad when it cannot reverence ; 
mourns when it cannot admire : from every thing it 
can learn ; and it is always willing to be taught. It 
discerns the true and the good, the grand and the 
beautiful, wherever truth and goodness, grandeur and 
beauty, are within its range ; while its range is only 
bounded by its faculties and by its life. It puts its 
spirit into other souls, then receives of that spirit back 
again ; and what comes to it directly from other souls 
it clothes with the power of its own. It often imparts 
the glory in which it rejoices ; its very mistakes are 
magnificent ; and if sometimes it wanders amidst illu- 
sions, they are the illusions of generous imaginings, 
and not of sharp, envious, or depreciating passions. 
But there is every where so much that is latent, so 
much that is undeveloped, so much to seek for, and so 
much that never can be found, — there is every where so 
present to the mind the idea of undiscoverable truth, 
of impenetrable mystery, and of unapproachable per- 
fection, — that any genuine soul, if it does not begin 
its culture in humility, must surely in humility con- 
tinue and end it. 

That which is greatest in a man, then, is that which 
he has in common with all men ; and, in the degree that 
this is made conscious in him by faculty and by sympa- 
thy, he is commanding in any distinct manifestation of 
power. But for such distinct manifestation of power 
there must be distinctive endowments ; and these again 
are by nature. Mysteries of spirit and organization 



THE COST OF A CULTIVATED MAN. 187 

meet us at this point for whicli philosopliy has no so- 
lution. The fact is all we know. We see it in the 
phenomena, but the cause lies behind the fact ; the 
essence is within the phenomena, and all is inscruta- 
ble. A man comes once in recorded time, and in that 
by which ages distinguish him he stands alone. Such 
a man is never repeated in the species. Yet such a 
man must be rich in what he inherits collectively with 
the species, as also decisive in what separately marks 
his individualism. By nature Paganini had depth and 
intensity of passion ; but so has many an oyster deal- 
er : he had a wild imagination ; so have gypsies and 
red Indians : he was odd, grotesque, and fitful ; so are 
the silliest humorists : he was melancholy and supersti- 
tious ; so are the merest fanatics : it was the combina- 
tion of these several qualities, musically inspired, that 
constituted his genius ; a physical power correspondent 
to his genius gave him the full command over it ; all 
united made him what he was — the wizard of the violin. 
This no mere labor could have made him ; yet not with- 
out labor either could he have been this ; not without 
labor — labor indefatigable and most patient, in which 
enthusiasm and capacity attained to their seeming mir- 
acles of achievement through the discipline of slow 
and toilsome progress. Effort, exertion, even drudg- 
ery, are, indeed, the price of such perfection ; but the 
materials of it are supplied by Nature. But, in such 
cases, the part which Nature has is not likely to be un- 
derrated. It is what diligence and training effect that 
is most in danger of being misunderstood. In those 
manifestations wherein Nature shows itself in outward 
force and passion Nature gets all the credit, and Art is 



188 ILLXJSTEATIONS OF GENIUS. 

overlooked. In those wlierein Nature works more 
inwardly Nature is not regarded, and Art has all the 
praise. But Art may be as severely cultivated in the 
one as in the other ; and, for supreme excellence. Nature 
is equally essential for both, and in both must be 
equally powerful. Nature, too, has not less of en- 
ergy, but often more, when the mind is inward in its 
action than when it is outward. Nature, for in- 
stance, is not less, but more, intense in Hamlet than 
in Richard ; and analogously it may be so in per- 
sons who represent Shakspeare as in his characters. 
Nature would seem predominant in Edmund Kean, 
and Art in Mrs. Siddons ; but this would be only 
seeming. A little insight would discover that Art 
was as subtle in Kean as in Siddons, and Nature 
as strong in Siddons as in Kean. If an utter stranger 
had come into an Athenian assembly while Demos- 
thenes was addressing it in one of his impassioned 
orations, he might fancy that this rush of impetuous 
power came from immediate impulse, and that the 
speaker owed every thing to Nature. If, in like man- 
ner, a stranger had entered the Roman forum while 
Cicero was declaiming one of his hastily prepared dis- 
courses, he might suppose that the speech was as elab- 
orately conceived as it was uttered, and that the man 
was entirely a man of Art. But the Greeks who were 
acquainted with the history of Demosthenes could 
cell one stranger how much their great orator was in- 
debted to labor ; and the Romans who were familiar 
with Cicero could tell the other how naturally their il- 
lustrious pleader came to be a speaker. Two kinds of 
mistake are occasioned by these two kinds of genius. 



THE COST OV A CULTIVATED MAN. 189 

Men of a certain turbulence of spirit think they are 
impassioned ; men of a certain tame capacity persuade 
themselves they are thoughtful ; the ideal of the former 
is vehemence, the ideal of the latter is elegance ; the 
first class think that to be furious in speech is Demos- 
thenic, the second class suppose that to be mellifluous 
is to be Ciceronian ; the one despises industry, the 
other mocks at impulse ; but both in different ways 
may be only feeble, the one as incapable of the gran- 
deur of passion as the other may be of the strength of 
meditation. 

A condition essential, therefore, to the production of 
a successfully cultivated man is the coincidence of fit- 
ness and destiny. I use these terms only in a relative 
and secondary sense. I am speaking within the sphere 
of mundane and visible relations. I know there is a sov- 
ereign, a spiritual, an infinite, an unseen and perfect 
Wisdom, by which all existence is constituted and by 
which it is ordered. In that supreme and invisible plan 
every life has a purpose, and in ways which no human 
intelligence can trace, fulfils it. And the purpose 
of any life in this limitless plan, the most noted as 
well as the most obscure, it is not given to human in- 
telligence to determine. The fitness and the destiny 
to which my attention is directed may be manifested 
in outward indications ; and beyond these my specula- 
tions do not extend. 

The man who is complete in that for which the world 
wants him seems not only to be suited for his work, 
but to have had all circumstance suited to him. He is 
born in the right age of history. The proper spot of 
earth waits for him and receives him. The household 



190 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

into which he enters appears best for him amidst all 
the households of humanity. So perhaps it might 
not be judged in many a case if we saw the man in 
the first stages of his nurture ; but so we find it 
when we can see his life in its issues. A similar 
adaptation may be noticed in any remarkable man's 
tastes, trials, and pursuits — in all, indeed, that sub- 
serves his training and his experience. It would only 
be wearisome to follow out these assertions through a 
series of psychological and historic illustrations. One 
will be sufiicient ; and that I find in the eminent man 
who has supplied me with my text. In him there was 
an admirable coincidence of fitness and destiny. In 
every way he was fitted to be a student and an artist ; 
and his destiny was all that we can conceive it could 
be to perfect him in his vocation. Born to comfort 
and competence, he was safe from the poverty that may 
chill genius and from the luxury that may enervate 
exertion. There are passages, in fact, in Goethe's 
writings from which we might infer that if he had rank 
and fortune by birth, and with them the refined and 
sesthetic life which aristocracy has almost by inherit- 
ance, he would never have sought that life by imagina- 
tion. The son of a man who was scholarly, critical, 
and a connoisseur, of a woman who was large in soul, 
at the same time impassioned and wise, Goethe was 
well favored both by blood and by early position. 
There was every thing that his development could 
need — care, contrast, incitement, guidance for knowl- 
edge, and ideal for aspiration. The city seemed but 
an enlargement of the household. It was a quiet old 
German town, bearing the marks of venerable centuries, 



THE COST OF A CULTIVATED MAN. 191 

active, ardent, and hearty ; historical, but not worn- 
out ; practical, but not sordid ; proud of its old uncon- 
quered independence ; proud of its traditions, its chiv- 
alry, and its legends. Belonging to such a place as 
cultivated, quaint, antique, and independent Frank- 
fort was, a mind gifted by Nature had all that it 
could desire for culture in circumstances. Blessed 
also with strength, health, and beauty, Goethe had 
whatever the body could do for the mind, and, what- 
ever arises out of those attuned relations, which a 
perfect physical and intellectual harmony cannot but 
establish between the soul and nature, between the in- 
dividual and society. Full of the power of self-ex- 
citement, nothing was a hinderance to his putting of it 
forth. He possessed, or could procure, every means 
of discipline and of growth ; and this discipline and 
growth he at no time neglected. He attended to 
them in every direction, and he continued them to the 
end. In every direction, too, and to the end, circum- 
stances were in his favor ; at each stage of his course 
fitness in him and destiny ever coincided. In relation 
to the great events of the world Goethe himself bears 
testimony to the excellence of his position. " I had," 
he says, " the great advantage of being born at a time 
when the world was agitated by great movements, 
which continued during my life ; so that I am a living 
witness of the seven years' war, the separation of Ameri- 
ca and England, the French revolution, the whole Na- 
poleon era, the downfall of that hero, and the events 
which followed. Thus I have obtained results and in- 
sight impossible to those who must learn all things 
from books." If, then, in Goethe we have a most 



192 ILLTJSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

notable illustration of coincidence between a man's 
faculties and his relations, we have the no less impres- 
sive example of a man wbo intuitively understood this 
coincidence, and who, in carrying out his intention, 
was complete in all that he undertook. 

In much of the action and talent of society, how- 
ever, there is rather a disjunction than a coincidence 
of fitness and destiny. In this matter the loss or mis- 
direction of eminent power is not so great an evil as 
the misapplication of ordinary power. No question 
but that many souls of genius have never been de- 
veloped. Unlettered barbarism, doubtless, has its 
Aristotles and Alexanders ; and Mozarts and Angelos 
may have pined away their unheard-of lives in rural 
huts and in city garrets. That natures of beautiful 
endowments and of heroic energies have been kept 
dumb and motionless by ignorance and poverty is 
not the mere sentimentalism of poetry ; it is a convic- 
tion forced upon us by the most sober observation of 
analogy and experience. But, though this be so, so- 
ciety has ever its supply of special genius — supply 
enough to quicken its impulses and to stimulate its im- 
agination. Special genius must of necessity be rare ; 
and this very rareness is a part of its value. The minis- 
try which it sustains it sustains also by reason of its rare- 
ness. And thus it may be that from the wrecks of olden 
arts and letters we have saved as much as it was good 
for us to possess. Common life we must differently 
regard. The vital substance of general society consists 
of the aggregate and action of moderate endowments ; 
and therefore the dislocation of faculty from its natu- 
ral adaptation becomes extensively a most practical 



THE COST OF A CULTIVATED MAN. 193 

injury. It is the occasion of inward and outward in- 
congruity ; of loss to the community and of grief to the 
individuaL Though the loss of available labor or the 
support of idleness becomes a severe tax to society, I 
yet set it down as a trifling consideration compared 
with the sufferings of mind which the men must un- 
dergo who discover too late a want of due relation be- 
tween their aptitudes and their avocations. There is 
hardly a bodily pain or a pecuniary want which I can 
put against the mortification, the trouble of thought, the 
disappointment of heart, and sometimes the uneasiness 
of conscience which must beset a man of sensibility 
who feels that his work is not the one suited to his ca- 
pacity. Such incongruities are the most likely to oc- 
cur in those departments of action into which sensibili- 
ty will accompany them — those departments that are 
mental rather than mechanical, and that are connected 
with the highest culture. In the degree that a man's 
agency is mental it is necessary that it should be free ; 
that it should be such as has its spring in the inborn 
tendencies of his being — a work in which action is 
spontaneity, and not struggle. It should, in a manner, 
be lyrical ; it should be in musical accordance with his 
predominating endowments. Even if this mental 
agency is but purely intellectual, this musical accord- 
ance is an element of the truest thought ; for just in the 
measure that a man thinks lyrically will he think in an 
order of coherence and consequence ; it is essential in 
all expression of the moral and religious nature. It 
was therefore with a profound significance that the 
Greeks included the culture of all the inward man 
within the term " music," The best results of mental 
13 



194 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIXJS. 

agency, then, can only be obtained in harmony and 
freedom ; and harmony and freedom can only be had by 
correspondence mth aptitude and nature. The incipient 
clergyman will be better in the pulpit than at the bar, 
and the born lawyer better at the bar than in the pul- 
pit. Men are sometimes drowsy in sermons that would 
be cogent in cases ; and, again, men are bewildered in 
cases who would be potent in sermons. It is a great 
misfortune for a man to be in either without election 
of capacity, consent of will, and simplicity of heart. 
The traditional and social prestige which as yet ad- 
heres to mental and scholarly avocations is no common 
temptation ; it is a temptation by which thousands are 
overcome and by which a vast sacrifice of happiness 
and dignity is occasioned. It is a temptation which 
will lose its power with the growth of social wisdom 
and which every advance of general education may do 
something to diminish. When society is wise the in- 
dividual will stand on his individuality, and not upon 
his accidents. There may possibly be yet such diffu- 
sion of superior culture that the possession of it shall 
be no longer a distinction, and that, except from indi- 
vidual characteristics, it shall be all the same whether 
for a certain number of daily working hours a man 
holds the pencil or the plough, makes baskets or makes 
books. Nothing would then determine the choice of a 
man's occupation but the disposition for it and the 
capacity. But once more to quote Goethe. " Man is 
not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to 
find out what he has to do, and to restrain himself 
within the limits of his power of comprehension." 
All that I have yet said refers only to what nature 



THE COST. OF A CULTIVATED MAN. 195 

and circumstances do for the man. This element of 
expense in the culture of a man comes out of an infinite 
exchequer. That which I have further to say con- 
cerns what a man does for himself; and herein is the 
personal, definite, and meritorious outlay of culture. 
In every fact of enjoyment or utility to which a man 
gives existence by his cultivated agency there is in- 
volved a cost to him which we rarely estimate. There 
is no method by which we can fix the cost of many of 
the ministries that ameliorate life ; least of all can 
we do it for those in which the labor is impalpable. 
To this the method of political economy is most rude 
and the laws of the money market wholly inapplicable. 
Even reputation, honor, popularity, and fame, as means 
of reward or as standards of deserving, are unequal, 
uncertain, and inadequate. A fee does not pay the 
skilful physician ; salary does not pay the trueheart- 
ed preacher ; and so with numerous other offices 
and engagements in civilized society. There is that 
of preparation in each which we cannot understand ; 
and in the due fulfilment of each there is that for 
which we have no measure of recompense. If there 
is any man in such relations whom mere money can 
satisfy, he is not worthy of them, and money more 
than pays him. It is in a pecuniary sense, however, 
that the individual is least open to temptation who cul- 
tivates himself for any office or in it which is not con- 
nected with mechanism or business. Wealth is an ob- 
ject which cannot be much before his mind ; he cannot 
always calculate even on support. In the spheres of 
unexciting and unimpassioned culture, success and 
eminence themselves bring, in the matter of money. 



196 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

but moderate remuneration. Gibbon was supposed to 
have .made a large fortune by his History; yet he 
somewhere himself declares that in the money which 
he received he did not get within two thousand pounds 
of what he paid for the books required in its composi- 
tion. This will serve analogously as an illustration in 
humble mental labors. The element of cost which the 
outlay of money can measure has generally but a small 
return in the income of money alone. The men who ex- 
ercise callings which demand scholarly preparation have 
hardly, as a class, a fair interest on the single pecuni- 
ary expense at which they have had their necessary 
training. The remuneration of any culture, away 
from the immediate and the physical, is, in practical 
communities, jealously regarded. The culture which 
connects itself with the most elevated relations of life 
has never any where found the amplest pecuniary re- 
muneration. This kind of culture must often, like 
virtue, be its own reward. The talents which secure 
the most ample and the most ready payment are those 
which are directed successfully to material gain or 
those which brilliantly contribute to general amuse- 
ment. It ever has been so, and probably so it ever 
will be ; so may it be, and so let it be. It is right 
that men should ever choose spiritual offices from mo- 
tives not dependent on pecuniary considerations. If a 
man has a good foot and figure, and wants merely to 
make money, let him rather be a dancer than a thinker. 
There is authority for this. When Gil Bias was choos- 
ing teachers for the adopted son of Count d'Olivarez, 
among the candidates for employment came a cele- 
brated dancing master. The interview with this gen- 



THE COST OF A CULTIVATED MAN. 197 

ius is instructive. "How much do you take per 
month ? " said Gil Bias. " Four double pistoles a 
month," answered he, "is the current price ; and I give 
but two lessons a week." " Four doubloons a month ! " 
cried Gil Bias. " That is a great deal." "How a great 
deal ? " replied he, with astonishment. " A great deal ! 
Why, you would give a pistole a month to his master of 
philosophy." 

It is not in the money which can be spent by a man 
or for him that we count the cost at which we have 
him truly cultivated. That is something which money 
cannot do. The deepest cost of genuine culture is in- 
ward ; and thus it is whether it relates to faculty or 
character. There is in this whatever it costs a man to 
achieve inward independence or to maintain it. This 
is often a great deal. Nothing, however, is price too 
much for such an independence ; it is the heart and 
soul, the life and light of purpose and of power. It 
may seem easy that a man should be authority enough 
to himself for the simple facts of sense and soul ; but 
nothing is so difficult. Most men lose the conscious- 
ness of such facts early, and they never recover it. 
They become thence involved in forms, in appear- 
ances, in artificialisms, in idolatries and imitations ; 
so that at last the real is lost, and the seeming 
takes its place. Thus it is that a man has frequent- 
ly to disrobe his soul, fold after fold, of preju- 
dices in which custom has inwrapped it before it 
has any clear discernment or free activity. This, in 
many ways, may cost him dearly ; but he must, at any 
cost, acquire and hold fast his inward independence. It 
is only as he has interior freedom and decision that he 



198 ILLFSTRATIOXS OF GEXIUS. 

can be himself; and it is only as he can be himself that 
he can be any thing — any thing that is real. It is 
only in this that a man can have a consciousness of 
truth that is properly his own ; and, if he has not this, 
life must be made up of echoes, doubts, falsehoods, and 
illusions. What a man is in his distinctive individ- 
uality, that he ought to know first of all, and then he 
may learn as to what he can do and what he can af- 
firm. Once knowing his individuality and its distinc- 
tive faculties, he must be true to them ; for it is by 
this fidelity alone that he is simple, determinate, con- 
fident, and honest. It is by such fidelity that he can 
learn msely, do efiectively, and afiirm positively ; that, 
like sacred men of old, he can say, " I speak that 
which I do know, and I testify that which I have 
seen." In matters of experience only such speech is 
to any purpose, otherwise there should be none. We 
must, indeed, accept of indefinite gradations of evi- 
dence and speak from various gradations of belief ; 
but that which we directly assert we ought person- 
ally to understand ; and it is in the degree our 
assertion is not only true, but the truth, by our 
method of expression, made distinctive and impres- 
sive, that our words have value. The principle of 
Descartes' philosophy, that a man should take noth- 
ing for granted, may be unsound in many depart- 
ments of reasoning ; but it is not so in matters of con- 
sciousness ; and these modify all facts which are facts 
of life. Whatever I can test for myself I must not 
declare on the authority of another ; and for whatever 
I should have the witness in myself, I must say only 
what the witness warrants. Another man's sight is 



THE COST OF A CULTIVATED MAN. 199 

not mine ; neither is mine his. We look upon the 
sun ; and, though the sun objectively is identical to us 
both, the reflection of him in the mind of each is dif- 
ferent. The sources of such differences are as multi- 
plied as there are human beings, as many as there are 
thoughts, as innumerable as there are impressions from 
existence and the universe. Less is another man's 
knowledge mine than his sensations ; less still his pas- 
sions ; and least of all his spiritual emotions. As I 
cannot be wise with another man's wisdom, I cannot 
be indignant with another man's anger ; I cannot be 
elated with his pride ; his grief is not mine, nor his 
joy, nor his love, nor his sense of beauty, nor his forms 
of imagining, nor his ideals of the perfect ; and there- 
fore, if I attempt to speak on such things, not as I my- 
self feel them, but as others phrase them, I shall only 
beat the air and speak with uncertain sounds. It is 
true that another man's spirit may act on mine, and it 
may act through his word ; it acts nobly and for my 
good if it stirs my life, if it prompts me to seek for 
truth, and if it emboldens me to utter it. It acts fa- 
tally and for my evil if it leads me to assume experi- 
ence that is not mine, to counterfeit truth which I have 
not found, and to speak in sounds for which I have no 
thought. Whatever influences may affect me, or how- 
ever much I may owe to them, the spirit must be my 
own, and so must be the word. 

That, therefore, which we must rate for most in the 
culture of a man is his individual experience. Expe- 
rience is not merely what a man has passed through, or 
that to which in his course he has been subjected, or 
that with which he has come into contact. Much of 



200 ILLUSTEATIONS OF GENIUS. 

incident, of opportunity, may occur to a man, and 
leave nothing with him or in him but the vacuum of a 
forgotten dream. That only is true experience which 
is brought into vital union w^ith consciousness in the 
spiritual organism of a man's own being. I may be in 
the midst of things, but in no living relation to them. 
I may be in the theatre, and the play be played ; but my 
eye may be dim and my mind may be cold. I am not 
affected ; the scenery is but a confusion of colors, and 
the performers are only shadows that flit about the 
stage. Music may sound, and all that genius can inspire 
may be in the air I breathe ; but my ear may be un- 
tuned or deaf; my heart may be callous or sad ; and to 
me it is as a song sung to one lying in a trance. There 
are men who travel much by sea and land without being 
enriched by the beauty and grandeur through which for 
years they move, without acquiring any of the tongues 
which they heard, without understanding any of the 
peoples whom they saw ; and these men sit down at last 
with no more knowledge of mankind or of themselves 
than if they had never left their chimney corners. 
This solid globe of ours is whirled with the millions of 
us all in the mighty circle of space around the sun ; 
and through the courses of the stars and of the seasons 
multitudes' of us travel during our scores of years even 
as a dullard gets over his journey sleeping in a stage 
coach. Time, space, objects, events are only ours as 
we can connect them with our personality, and out of 
its life impart, and to its life attract, power according 
to the sphere of our faculties and activity. The zodi- 
ac is traversed in as many revolutions by earth in the 
space of fifty years for the drone as for the worker ; 



THE COST OF A CULTIVATED MAN. 201 

and in as many minutes as it may require an epicure to 
dine a battle of Marathon may be fought and the 
civilization of a race decided. The distance across the 
Atlantic is the same now that it was a thousand years 
ago ; but, since then, Columbus has taken it out of 
the unknown of space, and, in bringing it within the 
things apprehended and measured, has connected it for 
power and for good with universal man. Every child 
witnesses the lid of a kettle moved by the water boil- 
ing in it ; but it was the boy Watt that made this 
fact reveal to him the mysteries of the steam engine. 
" One event happeneth," as it is written, " to the wise 
man and to the fool ; '' but the oneness goes not be- 
yond the happening, for in result it is as different as 
the men ; with the wise man it becomes wisdom, and 
with the fool it becomes folly. The wise man, as the 
fool, has his mistakes and his misfortunes ; but, while 
they add to the wise man's knowledge and serve to 
discipline his strength, they tend only to depress or to 
destroy the fool. The sufferings, the enjoyments, all 
the various changes and relations of the wise man's ex- 
istence minister to his knowledge and his work. A man 
of inward force and purpose will, when the illusions have 
departed, turn even his sins and passions to account. 

But I would in this remark keep my meaning clear 
and guarded from mistake. Because sins or passions 
may be turned to account in the wisdom of experience, 
I would not say that, therefore, they are desirable or 
may be indulged. This would, indeed, be a perilous 
doctrine, and it would be a still more perilous ex- 
periment. Benvenuto Cellini was at once a great 
artist and a great ruffian ; but in general the sins and 



202 ILLUSTRATIOKS OF GENIUS. 

passions of Cellini make nothing but the ruffian ; and, 
while the world has had but one Cellini, it has had 
ruffians without number. Saint Augustine had been a 
libertine ; but, though the experience of the libertine is 
felt in the eloquence of the penitent, it is in cries from 
the depths of shame, agony, and remorse. But, while 
Augustine arose in the power of a new spirit and laid 
bare his experience for instruction and for warning, 
thousands unnoted perish in their debaucheries. Even 
some of Augustine's own friends sunk in the waves which 
he buffeted ; he got safely to the shore, but they sank 
down amidst the breakers. Time has had no sound of 
them a,bove the waters but the sad one of their associate 
to tell of their destruction. And yet I have often met 
with criticisms which implied that men of genius volun- 
tarily placed themselves in certain positions or accepted 
of certain relations for the mere sake of the experience 
which these positions or relations were to yield. I 
do not believe this, and I cannot. I cannot believe 
that a man of true genius ever did any thing so false ; 
for he would well understand that the spontaneous work- 
ings of Nature never could be felt in so artificial an ad- 
justment ; he could well understand that the elements of 
humanity cannot be conjoined like the elements of mat- 
ter in chemistry in reference to a definite result ; that 
the elements of humanity are not subject to control, 
and are beyond experiment ; and, therefore, he would 
understand that, in human concerns, a mechanical pre- 
disposition to be moved would have no more resem- 
blance to real emotion than the sound of a trumpet 
has to the color of a rose. Genius is not in danger 
of any such misapprehension ; and it is too sagacious 



THE COST OP A CULTIVATED MAN. 203 

ever even to venture on a trial which must not only 
issue in absurdity, but begin in it. But what men 
have actually gone through may be turned into power ; 
yet, when guilt and wrong are in question, it is not the 
guilt and wrong which one has done that give him en- 
viable power ; the better kind of power is acquired by 
guilt and wrong manfully resisted and manfully en- 
dured. When neither, however, is concerned, there are 
experiences which train and test power, and to which 
we owe some of the finest manifestations of genius and 
character. I am not going to enlarge on that worn- 
out theme — the calamities of authors ; or on that trite 
sentimentalism — the sufferings of genius: both have 
been industriously collected, and mostly from the out- 
side of life. The experiences to which I refer are of the 
inside of life ; they are not to be read of in biogra- 
phies or anecdotes ; the result of them is to be found in 
work, whether in art or action. In all work of either 
kind which can much impress us we feel that in the 
soul of the doer there must have been pain and sorrow 
oftentimes as well as power — always the travail of 
thought and of the deep forces of the soul. If this has 
not been so, a man will not stir the forces of our souls ; 
and who moves us inwardly and strongly but he who 
can stir the forces of our souls ? Thus the thinker 
moves us in the demand which he makes on our facul- 
ties to master his logic, to comprehend his ideas or his 
science ; thus the poet moves us through thought, 
through sympathy, through imagination ; the man of 
splendid deeds thus moves us ; and so does the man of 
good ones. Whenever we read a book that searches 
the intellect or a poem that pierces the emotions ; 



204 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

wlienever we witness a drama that fills us with a senso 
of power ; whenever we hear music that seems to flow 
from the centre of spirit or of passion ; whenever we 
look upon a painting that makes us think or upon 
sculpture that makes us weep ; whenever we are told 
of a brave man's success or of a wise man's fortitude, — 
we have generally impressions of seriousness, trials 
from within their being ; we gaze through their works 
into their lives, and there behold the throes out of 
which their works were born. It is not in levity or 
joy that the thinker finds his philosophy, or the poet 
his inspiration, or the good man his discipline. Even 
when their fortunes are brightest, if things otherwise 
than gladsome had not been in them they had gained 
no power, in philosophy, poetry, or virtue. Often, how- 
ever, the power comes up through dark fortunes ; and 
that it did not sink into despair we owe to persever- 
ance that could not be tired out, to patience that could 
not be disturbed, or to fortitude which, based on con- 
sciousness of faculty or on consciousness of principle, 
could not be subdued. Who can estimate the efibrt, 
the disappointments and the fears, of many an author 
and an artist previous to his first success ? Yet in that 
success itself may have been his peculiar trial, his de- 
cisive risk ; since elation is ever more dangerous to ex- 
ertion than uncertainty, and the intoxication of ap- 
plause more fatal to endeavor than the most depressing 
misgivings of obscurity. But in the true artist, as in the 
true man, there is always a conviction that he is in the 
midst of the immeasurable. He knows that he occupies 
only a point ; and, gain largely as he may, he still 
knows that he covers but a point. His humility is 



THE COST OF A CULTIVATED MAN. 205 

therefore ever equal to his attainment ; but his hope, 
also, is ever onward in advance of his humility. Thus 
no success renders him idle or presuming ; for though 
what he has done may cheer him, it is yet, and al- 
ways, but a speck insphered in the mystery of exist- 
ence, with the possible and the illimitable on every 
side of it. He has in this conviction an invariable 
check upon vanity, and as invariable an impulse to as- 
pire. And thus it is in virtue, as in art, except that 
virtue may often be grandest when no outward success 
attends it ; that the patriot may be most noble in his 
spirit when he fails in his aim ; that the philanthropist 
is not less benignant though suffering may continue 
which he labored to remove ; and the most glorious 
hour of the apostle and the brightest may be the hour 
of his martyrdom. In the midst of this immeasurable 
we are all living ; and that which each of us can take 
from it and transmute into life, — that is experience. 
So much we snatch out of the unconscious and the im- 
personal and convert into determinate and spiritual ex- 
istence. A sculptor lies asleep upon a quarry of mar- 
ble and dreams a goodly dream of beauty ; but not 
until he awakes and shapes a piece of the quarry to the 
dream is his dream of any more purpose to the world than 
the quarry. And thus are we in this boundless quarry of 
being. It is by what each of us personally moulds of 
it to the excellent, the lovely, and the true, that we give 
our contribution to life and make humanity our debtor. 
Culture may, therefore, be regarded as it acts on 
faculty or as it acts on character. In reference to 
faculty we discern clearly its necessity ; and we know 
that it must be had at the cost of much labor, persis- 



206 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF GEI^IUS. 



tency, and sacrifice. No man pretends that a consum- 
mate writer, or speaker, or musician, or painter, or 
sculptor, or even a good mason or carpenter, is made 
by rude Nature. As little can it be expected that com- 
pleteness of character can be had out of rude Nature, 
admitting that rude Nature is ever so beautiful. Vir- 
tue is not science as Plato teaches, neither is it in- 
stinct ; it is the growth of time and thought, formed 
by care and conscience, animated ever by aspiration for 
the perfect. And yet character is more than virtue — 
character I mean in its noblest sense; for it is all that 
constitutes the personality of the whole spiritual and 
social man. It is, therefore, evidently absurd to sup- 
pose that excellence in character can ever be had more 
easily or more cheaply than excellence in faculty. The 
finest artist is a poor result, whether of Nature or of 
training, compared with an admirable man ; and far 
more frequent and more common are fine artists than 
admirable men. A man spiritually and socially har- 
monious—a man with all the best attributes of his 
humanity rightly ordered andrightly active— is among 
the things of this world that are the rarest and the 
most desirable. Not in usefulness only, but in mere 
enjoyment, the excellent in character are more desirable 
than the excellent in art. I speak here looking at 
the entireness of life ; for, in the relations that need 
him, I would have the artist for the sake of his art ; 
and, in such relations, it is only with his art that I am 
concerned. Speaking, however, of life in its wholeness, 
it is the excellent in character that cheer and bless it. 
Not only from them have we those amenities which 
soothe and brighten the hours that make up the un- 



THE COST OF A CULTIVATED MAN. 207 

written liistories of hearts and homes, but from them, 
too, we have those sublime manifestations of disinter- 
estedness and goodness which irradiate the gloom of 
recorded history. It is by the souls of the greatly ex- 
cellent that we are drawn into highest sympathy with 
our kind. The latest generations glory in their worth, 
and no length of centuries causes their brightness to 
seem distant. When our spirits sink at the doings of 
cruelty and evil, they gladden us with the thought that 
there is, notwithstanding, a capacity in man for mercy 
and the right which never fails of some souls to illustrate 
its power. Character, then, as compared with faculty^ 
is preeminently the greater, both as an element of worth 
and as an element of energy. Who would not, as to 
worth, be judged rather by his manhood than his art ? 
Who would desire to be called a great painter, but a 
base man ? No ; character must be behind the faculty 
ere we can give greatness to the faculty itself; for, if 
w^e know assuredly that the character is mean, the 
faculty must be miraculous that in spite of this knowl- 
edge we can admire. Even in immediate impression 
the moral is often a greater power than the artistic. 
What is the most rapturous burst of music to the 
melody of words that come out from a soul moved by 
the spirit of compassion ? What is the splendor of the 
most magnificent picture to the look of bravehearted 
energy with which a generous man becomes eloquent for 
the poor, the suffering, or the persecuted ? Did Shak- 
speare, even in the mouth of a Siddons, a Kemble, or a 
Kean, ever swell the breast with more impassioned 
consciousness than does a mere name sometimes with 
which a new deed of heroic mercy becomes united ? 



208 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GEISTIUS. 

In solidity of achievement, character is almost every 
thing. This is true especially in the practical worthiness 
of the world. It builds up fortunes and it builds up 
nations ; it conquers Nature and it conquers men ; it 
gains dominion, it extends dominion, and it holds it. 
Defect of character is more fatal to achievement than 
defect of faculty ; for some men have done much with 
moderate talents, and others have done nothing with 
great ones. In permanence of influence, too, character 
is superior to faculty. Character is often a living 
power of itself ; and, when combined with faculty, it is 
a living power in the faculty. One pure patriot sur- 
vives armies of generals ; one true citizen outlives 
tribes of demagogues. The orator is immortal when 
the force of manhood is in his art, and his art is im- 
mortal because it enables him to express the force of 
that manhood ; without the manhood the art would be 
only as the outlines of a cloud which is broken by a 
shower. It is by the permanence of influence in char- 
acter that the saint in a man is venerated when the 
preacher is forgotten. The agitator perishes in the tu- 
mult of the hour ; but the reformer which lay witJiin the 
agitator is forever remembered, honored, and belovedc 
The most essential cost of attainment is inward ; in- 
ward also is its most essential recompense. Such is 
the highest recompense of faculty ; still more such is 
the highest recompense of character. In the exercise 
of faculty trained into mastery there is enjoyment 
which cannot be told. The man who does not find 
satisfaction in his work loses the greatest compensa- 
tion of labor. But of any man whom we can properly 
call an artist, this is what we can hardly suppose. In 



THE COST OF A CULTIVATED MAN. 209 

the inspired excitement of his powers the artist has the 
grandest moments which genius can bestow. No gifts, 
no tributes, no honors, no applause can have the worth 
which such moments have ; and, when wealth and 
fame are gained, their greatest value still is in the con- 
sciousness or the memory of the inward force that won 
them. If a man should not win them, yet that inward 
force is ever his, and only vice can darken its enjoy- 
ment. Ere great artists attain to external fortune or 
celebrity, they must, no doubt, often have supreme de- 
light by means of the faculty with which they are to 
enchant the world. Edmund Kean, it has been said, 
insisted that his finest acting had been in barns ; and 
this I can well believe. A natural artist has pleasure 
in himself and he has pleasure in his art ; for his art 
is the most profound expression of himself; but the 
artificial artist — the artist that is made, not horn, for 
his art — labors on that which is foreign to him, and 
therefore has satisfaction neither in his spirit nor in 
his work. Not in his work does he find his reward, but 
in wages and applause. If he miss these his work has 
left him nothing, and he fails of all for which he labored. 
When I see one who puts his soul into his art, and who 
therefore finds delight in the action of his art, be- 
cause it is the action in part, at least, of his highest atid 
most cultivated life, I see a genuine artist ; and, so far 
as the exercise of his faculty goes, I see in him a true 
man also — one who in his faculty has a source of in- 
herent and perennial interest ; one who is not depend- 
ent for his happiness on the works or words of others ; 
one who has faith in himself, consequently hope, like- 
wise candor and simplicity ; one who knows that he 
14 



210 ILLUSTHATIOIiS OF GENIUS. 

has worth because Nature gave him talent and disci- 
pline has given him skill ; one who is not cast do^vn 
by the insensibility of the ignorant nor made wretched 
by the censure of the assuming. But when I see one 
sick for outward recognition, impatient for notoriety, 
insatiate for adulation, as sordid at the same time as 
vain, having no passion stronger than the love of 
flattery, except the love of money, — in such a one I see 
not an artist from within, but only from the outside ; 
and though his dexterity may suprise, it does not de- 
light me ; for it is void of inspiration, and brings me 
no power from a new soul. The most genuine artist 
does not indeed find all his satisfaction in the isolated 
exertion of his faculty ; for he knows that his faculty 
has not its full action until others are brought within 
the sphere of its expression. It is to this end that it 
exists and acts ; for humanity in all things is social ; 
and in art, not less than in other relations of humani- 
ty, the saying is true, that " no man liyeth unto him- 
self." This again is the reward of the sincere artist as 
well as of the sincere man, that true power goes out from 
him and true sjonpathy comes back ; life is put forth, 
life is returned ; in the union of both there is enlarge- 
ment of his being and enlargement of his happiness. 
Speaking thus of the artist, I speak within none of 
those conventional limitations which confine the term 
to two or three special kinds of refined exertion. I 
would apply it to the man who brings any form of cul- 
tivated talent into distinct action — the poet as well as 
the painter, the orator as well as the musician, the 
author as well as the sculptor. If, therefore, the best 
reward even of those who act on the more immediate 



THE COST OF A CULTIVATED MAN. 211 

emotions of men is interior, how much more must 
it be for those who work remotely and away from such 
emotions ! They peculiarly must have their pleasure 
in the exercise of faculty, else they have nothing ; for 
to those who spend their strength in the mysterious 
depths of science and the intellect there never come 
the revenues of wealth, never the fame of the multi- 
tude ; they must have in thought alone its own reward : 
and truly it is a mighty reward ; for in the mere con- 
sciousness of faculty striving after truth for itself, push- 
ing always farther into the immensity of the unknown, 
there must be a sublime experience, which we can no 
more compare with the enjoyments of riches and ap- 
plause than we can compare the essence of the soul 
with the agitations of the senses. I -need not say 
that the best rewards of character, too, are those which 
are interior — the strength of truth, the peace of duty, ' 
the innate beauty of affection, the blessed feelings of 
benevolence, the holy joy of generous exertions, the 
faith and hope that live in the inward silence of the 
heart, and that have consciousness of immortality in 
their aspiration for the perfect. 



CONVERSATION. 

Much intercliaiige of word must of necessity pass be- 
tween men without any interchange of thought. Cer- 
tain topics must always exist for this purpose which 
are universal and invarying. A brilliant English jour- 
nalist once mentioned, in a long article, that all acci- 
dents were dispensations of Providence for the advan- 
tage of newspapers. One of the arguments by which 
he sustained his position — and he stated the argument 
with no less precision than perspicuity — was, that a 
vastly greater number of accidents occur during the 
recess of Parliament than during its sitting. The 
theory was most cogently discussed and most copious- 
ly illustrated. We might, I think, enlarge this theory, 
and demonstrate upon sound principles that some very 
important phenomena exist simply for the benefit of 
conversation. Health is one of these. For what 
other reasons are persons in good or bad health but 
that mutual inquiries may be made about the matter ? 
Not, to be sure, that the inquiries ever demand an an- 
swer ; but, then, if health had no vicissitudes, the in- 
quiries could not have originated. You meet your 
neighbor of a morning whom you saw the evening be- 
fore, and he is looking as rosy as the rising sun, 
and you inquire after his health. Now, I ask, if no 

(212) 



CONVERSATION. 213 

man had " invented " health, what would you inquire 
after ? and if you had nothing to inquire after, how 
could you begin to talk ? and if you could not begin, 
of course you could not go on : and therefore health 
was " invented " for the good of conversation. We take 
the contrary of this illustration, and the truth of our 
theory will be as luminously apparent. You fall in 
with an unhappy friend who is far gone in the last 
stage of consumption. It is the close of October; 
and " you hope that he is well." The object is clear : 
it is merely to say something. " The weather " is 
another phenomenon. Two persons gravely state each 
to each that it is hot, both bearing witness to the fact in 
rivers of perspiration; or that it is cold, stammering 
while they say it from the chatter of their teeth ; yet, 
not satisfied, as if there was still not sufficient for con- 
viction, they aver, in corroboration, the venerable testi- 
mony of " the oldest inhabitants." Two other topics 
come after these ; and they are politics and the dollar. 
But, as politics may breed contention, men fall back 
upon the dollar ; and though this dollar in the concrete 
of life is the centre of contest and envy, in the abstract 
of conversation it is the centre of agreement and sym- 
pathy. The English tongue, it is computed, has many 
thousands of nouns ; but the noun, dollar, is more fre- 
quently heard than nine hundred and ninety-nine of 
the others out of every thousand. In street, steam- 
boat, on the railroad, in the stage coach, it is the sound 
that rings ever in your ear. This noun, dollar, is, in- 
deed, the noun — the noun of nouns — the noun 
substantive, the noun ubiquitous, and the noun om- 
nipotent. " A noun," says Lowth, " is a word which 



214 IMUSTEATIONS OP GE^'IUS. 

signifies a thing that can be heard, felt, seen, conceived, 
or understood." It is long since I was at school, and 
I quote from memory. In spirit the reference is, I be- 
lieve, correct ; and the spirit is aU I want. How com- 
pletely is the word dollar, then, a noun ! since all these 
distinctions united belong to it; for, in sound, idea, 
and possession, it stands for that which men can best 
hear, feel, see, conceive, or understand. Other topics 
we had better leave here unnoticed ; though in circles 
not unrefined they are not deemed unworthy. Those 
interchanges in which silliness is current coin and in 
which nonsense pays for nonsense ; in which compli- 
ment is bartered for compliment and the envy in the 
heart is measurable by the sweetness on the Ups; 
those soundings of nothings which are but the echoel 
of empty heads, the miscellaneous chatterings com- 
pounded of gabble and gossip which relieve idleness 
by scandal, — are none of them matters that our sub- 
ject or our inclination requires us to discuss. Conver- 
sation, properly so called, demands for its exercise 
moral and intellectual qualifications to which these 
things are abhorrent; and it is with such conversation 
that we are now concerned. 

Conversation ought to be mental music, in which di- 
versity of thoughts in the unity of humanitv makes 
harmony for the soul. Amenity, spiritual and social, 
IS a first, is an indispensable, condition. Propriety is, 
of course, a first condition — an accordance of mind 
and utterance with place, persons, time, circumstances, 
and subject. A march would not be music in a church, 
nor an anthem music on a parade ground. A chorus 
from the Messiah would not be more discordant in a 



CONVERSATION. 215 

ball room than a waltz in a cathedral, and none of 
them more than the solecisms that are often committed 
in conversation. Mutual deference is the life of re- 
fined communion, a necessary element of intellectual 
grace. Nor is it only mutual kindness ; it is a mutual 
debt, a debt which every man is bound by his nature 
to pay, which every man is entitled by his nature to 
receive — to which the generous heart gives its glad con- 
sent, to which the moral reason confers its impressive 
sanction. The violation of such claims is insolence, 
and not courage. It is to turn backward for a model 
— find it in the savage. No man is blameless that 
does this. In doing so, an ordinary man is impertinent 
and a gifted man is arrogant. I am far, however, from 
confining my idea to manners ; though courtesy even 
in manners is a beautiful emblem in the sacrament of 
social charity. I carry my idea into the spirit. In- 
deed, only from amenities of the spirit can those of 
word and bearing come ; only in the amenities of the 
spirit can be found the ties of a living communication. 
If conversation is an efiluence of souls, a mingling 
of souls, as contact and contrast, then, above all things 
else, there must be freedom ; then must there be con- 
fidence — no suspicion, no fear. Suspicion is the palsy 
of the heart ; fear is a chain of ice upon the tongue. 
Half words are worse than silence ; and either is death 
to conversation. To be genuine, to be himself, a man 
must believe and be believed ; he must trust and he must 
be trusted. Much of the best charm of conversation con- 
sists in the self-revealing which is thus prompted. The 
scowl of a doubt quenches it as quickly as the shadow 
of a hawk does the song of a bird. 



216 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

Rudeness in social converse is defect of sympathy ; 
and defect of sympathy is often but the want of imagi- 
nation. Imagination is the truest of teachers, because 
it is a living and actualizing teacher. It delivers 
thought from the imprisonment of one's own personal 
consciousness, and gives him understanding of others 
in the spirit and the body of each life. Herein we have 
the condition of the widest sympathy ; for what is 
sympathy but to feel away from ourselves and to real- 
ize what passes in the breasts of others ? Men meeting 
thus in the fulness of comprehension could not cant 
or cavil, for they could not be so mean of soul. They 
could not mistake or misinterpret, for the intention at 
least would be understood ; and with ingenuous minds 
it is the same thing to know and to be just. In concerns 
of intellect, in matters of thought, to be just is to be 
tolerant, and to be tolerant is to be gentle. A large 
discourse of reason is not more foreign to distrust, to 
captiousness, to onesidedness, to bigotry, than is a 
large discourse of imagination. The origin of many 
spiritual vices will be found more frequently in the 
want of fancy than in the want of conscience. More 
fatal still to grace of conversation is a sharp and un- 
scrupulous intellect. The moral atmosphere about 
such a man is a vapor that bears infection along with 
it, and which either irritates or sickens those who 
breathe it. The man of such an intellect is a gladia- 
tor who desires only to fight. Cunning, indeed, he is 
of fence ; master of his weapon, and merciless in its 
use. It is the sword of a spirit, but not of a holy one ; 
sharp to wound, and often sharpest to v/ound the unof- 
fending. 



CONVERSATION. 217 

The love of truth is the spirit of all lofty converse. 
The love of truth is the grandest aspiration after the 
grandest object. By no other spirit can men be more 
sublimely animated, and in no other spirit can they 
more humanely come together. Let their opinions, 
then, be as many and as opposite as may be, there is 
no danger of ill will. This love of truth is root to all 
the charities. The tree which grows from it may have 
thousands of distinct and diverging branches ; but good 
and generous fruit will be on them all. This love of 
truth is a bow of peace, ready for every concession that 
is honest, firm against every compromise that is not. 
This love of truth is the noblest stimulus to inquiry; 
ardent to seek, yet patient to examine ; willing to com- 
municate, but more willing to receive ; contemptuous of 
petty curiosity, but passionate for knowledge. This love 
of truth is the life of all philosophy ; it is that which 
germinates in meditation, which grows into science, 
and which brings a new shape of being into the uni- 
verse in the birth of every discovery. The love of 
truth is the spirit of all eloquence. Speech without 
it is but babble. The mere art of rhetoric is more 
noisy, but less useful, than the tinman's trade. But 
when the love of truth fires up the passions, puts its 
lightning in the brain, then let men give heed, for a 
prophet is among them. This love of truth is the 
strength of all heroism. That cause alone is worthy 
which is eternally right ; and he alone is worthy who, 
in devotion to the right, defends it. It is such a spirit 
that clothes the martyr with a flame which outshines 
the blaze that kills him. This love of truth binds the 



218 ILLUSTRATIOI^S OF GENIUS. 

soul to all true spirits on earth, in heaven, and to 
God — the Truth, perfect and eternal. Compare emu- 
lations of argument, pungencies of sarcasm, dazzlings 
of fancy vain of its glitter, pride of logic, and pomp 
of declamation with the simple thoughts which the 
love of truth suggests, and they are but as the sound 
of an automaton to the voice of a man. 

Reciprocity is the just law of conversation. Truth, 
confidence, honesty in speech is the moral realization 
of this law. But it has also an intellectual realiza- 
tion. Intellectual reciprocity is according to the amount 
of suggestiveness. This exists in the degree that liv- 
ing words are spoken and that living minds are pres- 
ent ; for life meeting life ever gives forth new life. 
Thus each person is active and passive, at the same 
time imparting and receiving. In conversation, mind 
should impart and should receive inspiration. Of all 
forms of speech, conversation is that which is poorest 
without inspiration ; it is that which must have inspi- 
ration, or it has nothing. In other modes of speech 
simple instruction may be of decisive value ; and infor- 
mation which we need loses nothing of its value by 
the 'dulness of its statement. But in conversation, 
mere instruction is no proper object: and, when made 
an obj ect, is impertinent and insufferable . O ther modes, 
if possible, are worse — disquisitions that choke atten- 
tion ; declamation that swamps thought in the waveless 
Dead Sea of its muddy monotony ; topics insisted on 
that nobody cares about; facts amplified that either 
all know or that are not worth knowing ; proposi- 
tions demonstrated which admit of no question, or 



CONVERSATION. 219 

if they do, have no value when resolved. Such modes 
are barren. Barrenness is around them and barrenness 
is in them. No seed do they contain, and no fruit can 
grow near them. Of some you hear the remark made, 
that they can talk like a book; but like what sort of 
book can they talk ? Is it like any sort of book with 
head, or heart, or nature in it ? If the silent books 
were really like these talking books, one should confess 
that Sultan Omar did in Alexandria a work of great 
mercy for the world. The sultan was no doubt taci- 
turn, and not much of a reader. Perhaps he had 
some viziers or imaums near him of correct and tor- 
menting fluency, who, as the learned told him, " talked 
like books." " Bish millah," he might have thought; 
" the more books I destroy the better ; " and so that 
which has been always ascribed to him as a work of 
barbarian bigotry may have been one of benevolent 
compassion. No ; the talkers that talk like books 
are mere sentence makers ; syntactical machines, rhe- 
torically constructed, that grind out phrases as a barrel 
organ grinds out tunes. Mere sentences are but forms 
of words. It is spirit and truth that make forms of sound 
words ; but sound words with as little form as can be 
are the best. Articulated voice that has nothing for 
the mind is even wearisome to the ear. That which fills 
both ear and mind is articulated life. He who would 
have life in his speech must have regard to his life. 
It will not live ty itself nor on itself. Reading and 
observation must feed the mind ; meditation and reflec- 
tion must change the food to substance. 

Life in conversation implies variety. It embraces 
the greatest possible diversity. It excludes nothing 



220 ILLUSTEATIOXS OF GEXIUS. 

except what is Ticious, ignoble, or ungenerous. This, 
indeed, is the glory of genuine conversation ; nor the 
glory merely, but the characteristic, which distinguishes 
conversation from prattle or from prosing. Whatever 
can excite attention, attract interest, or move sym- 
pathy, it deals with ; not methodically, but magnetical- 
ly. One topic multiplies and diversifies itself as it 
passes through independent minds ; ever a new topic, 
and ever yet the same. It may change ; but it changes 
like the changing of a strain. Let the spirit of the 
hour not be violated ; let the unity of sentiment be 
not broken. Art, literature, nature, travel, anecdote, 
adventure, science, gossip, can all be used to enliven 
and delight. The heaviest matter of an encyclopaedia, 
passed through the mind of a glowing and plastic fan- 
cy, comes with shapely newness out — a genuine coin- 
age of brilliancy and beauty. Such a fancy can easily 
take the lightest matter in a " circulating library," 
condense it into solidity, and put the stamp on it of 
true value. All things are available in colloquialism 
but dulness or ill nature ; the one may be pardoned, 
even tolerated ; but no amount of talent should save 
ill nature from social excommunication. And this is 
not intolerance, but charity. Conversation puts no re- 
straints upon honest opinion except such as good feeling 
and good sense do of themselves maintain ; and these 
are sufficient. Every faculty has in conversation both 
sphere and stimulus. No understanding is too deep, 
no memory too retentive, no imagination too grand for 
the conversational circles of the civilized community. 
In the close and small group, not less than in the wide 
arena, there is urgency for power and room for great- 



CONVERSATION. 221 

ness. It is of peculiar interest to observe in conversa- 
tion the different countenances, with their ever-varying 
changes, whether of action or impression. The forest 
painted by the sun and moving to the wind is a fine 
object ; the hollow sky is august to the upward gaze, 
nor less so to the downward look, given back in the 
mirror of the sea when you stand in the centre of the 
sphere and seem as a king in the midst of the worlds,with 
the glory of heaven above your head and beneath your 
feet ; yet are these, or aught that is outwardly mighty, 
grander than the human face in its soul-moved muta- 
tions ? Is the shade on the hill or the light on the flower 
nobler or more lovely than the calm of thought on the 
manly brow or than the blush of emotion on the cheek 
of woman? Are any potencies or appearances of out- 
ward nature so truly a shrine of God, or do they give 
so sublime a reflection of his divinity ? Watch this 
human face — afflicted, joyous, softened, impassioned. 
Watch it when struggling to conceal a rapture or a 
misery that is too sacred for the common eye. Great- 
est of all, watch it when subdued in the holy calm of 
charity and faith ; then you know that, full as creation 
is of power, its incomparable grandeur is that of man. 
This it is, and not the outward creation, that taxes for- 
ever all the energy and genius of painting ; to this, in 
all efforts of the grandest art, outward creation is sub- 
ordinate and secondary. In conversation we see the edu- 
cated face as we see it in great pictures, great orators, 
and great actors. If we have not its aspects of concen- 
trative energy, we have more than an equivalent in the 
endless versatility, in the vivid alternations of mood and 
meaning, which conversation elicits. Thus eye, ear, 



222 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

and mind have their appropriate gratifications. Singly 
and grouped, human figures and faces, speaking and 
listening, changing ever as Nature prompts, give to 
the eye successive pictures of unstudied grace in 
position and expression, not the counterfeit of human- 
ity wanting the life of humanity, " but the true and 
perfect image of life indeed." And never is the deep, 
strong voice of man, or the low, sweet voice of woman, 
finer than in the earnest but mellowed tones of famil- 
iar speech, richer often than richest music, which are a 
delight while they are heard, which linger still and 
still upon the ear in softened echoes, and which, when 
they have ceased, come long after back to memory like 
the murmurs of a distant hymn. O, it is a very pleas- 
ure to listen to such voices, accordant with lofty con- 
ceptions and sweet humanities — the soul breathings 
that now swell with daring imagination and then 
sink into the gentleness of sadness or of pity. I 
have heard such voices, voices that were music from 
the soul and to it — the very melody of thought, and 
of thought that was the very soul of goodness. Beau- 
tiful conceptions sang along the syllables ; beautiful 
feelings came trickling from the heart in liquid tones. 
Very pleasant are such voices — pleasant on the fra- 
grant air of a summer's evening, pleasant by the 
fire on a winter's night, pleasant in the palace, pleas- 
ant in the shanty, pleasant while they last, pleasant to 
remember, even with sorrow, when they are silent — 
when their melody shall never, never again attune and 
sweeten the common air of eartfi. 

A peculiar interest in conversation consists in the 
free play of mind. Each mind can act with other 



CONVERSATION. 223 

niinds that are different, and be better for the differ- 
ence. In the conversational circle there is an office 
for the thinker, for the muser, for the poet, for the wit, 
for the humorist ; and even the punster has his use. 
The best office in it is that which the various genius of 
woman fills. Here at least she may exercise her power, 
and with great and eminent service to society. Here 
her influence comes into contact with none of the polem- 
ics about her rights or her wrongs. And let no one 
think the sphere mean or subordinate. Eloquence the 
most impressive and the most lasting is often heard in 
it ; and, taking liberty to refer to my own experience, 
the eloquence which has sunk the most deeply into my 
own feelings and memory I heard in conversation, and 
not in the pulpit, the senate, or the popular assembly. 
If we leave the general social circle and come into the 
region of intimate affections, what heartfelt eloquence 
do they often speak, without rhetoric, or show of ora- 
tory, or pomp of words ! Listen to some loving wife 
who is pleading with her misguided husband. What 
looks, what streaming tears, what persuasiveness and 
pathos of intonation! How perfect is it, and how 
pure ! What are your theatres and your senates, your 
courts, your logomachies, and harangues to their home- 
felt power ? And why is this a power ? Because it is 
the heart that speaks ; because it is Nature in the heart. 
All the sacred eloquence of home is conversational ; 
and most of such eloquence is woman's. I have heard 
a ragged mother, after years had passed over her afflic- 
tion, bewail the death of her soldier son with a grandeur 
and an agony that would have made the best acting 
of Mrs. Siddons appear as mouthing and mere rant. 



224 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

But these cases are too solemn to be used as illustra- 
tions. I have seen two wild peasants on the moun- 
tain side, who, in boldness and grace of gesticulation, 
in dignity and force of utterance, would have been both 
admiration and despair to a Kean or to a Talma. In 
genuine conversation, Nature is less constrained than 
in set orations. Public speech is not often eloquent ; 
for not only does it generally want the higher nature, 
but common nature. Mr. Macready asserts that the 
diseases in the throat to which clergymen are subject 
arise from the use of feigned tones and the wearing of 
starched, white cravats. But this is not the worst ; 
nearly all of us, of whatever profession, use feigned 
tones in the voice of intellect, in the voice of con- 
science, and wear starched cravats on the necks of our 
imaginations. 

Conversation fulfils several oifices in social and in- 
dividual culture. Conversation gives impulse ; and im- 
pulse is a continual need of mind. Isolation tends 
to indolence ; it begets inactivity and revery, and it 
may end with incapacity. The motion of the mind is 
not more than any other motion self-originated. It is 
not perpetual. Were it even perpetual, that would 
not be sufficient. It would be but of one kind and 
in one direction ; but it needs to be of many kinds 
and in many directions. Like all other motion, it re- 
quires power from without to begin, to continue, to 
change, to complicate, to vary it. Meditation will not 
answer, for this throws us on ourselves ; and often the 
inertia of our minds is such that we cannot meditate. 
Beading will not answer ; for books are nothing when 
the mind is passive. Ideas in books are like objects 



* CONVERSATION. 225 

in a prospect which a dense fog covers. Their glory 
is a blank until the sun melts off the vapor. Light 
and heat from the soul must pour themselves over the 
page before it shines with a living splendor. Mind 
must have the active and present contact of mind to 
arouse it, to provoke it to exertion, and to shame it 
out of sloth. But in the mere presence of humanity 
there is power ; and, independently of all excitement, 
this social magnetism of social intercourse calls out 
our mental energy and adds to it. The moral impulse 
of conversation is yet more valuable than the intellect- 
ual. Brooding discontents it shivers to small dust, 
and then it scatters this dust upon the air of pleasant 
words. It dispels the melancholy which solitary thought 
engenders ; it casts out with its fine human exorcism 
the fiend of self-contemplation, which seclusive habits 
invite and worship. We find in conversation a variety 
of wholesome impulses. We find them in sympathy 
that cheers us and we find them in praise that encour- 
ages. We find them in coincidence of opinion that 
strengthens our conviction or in the dissent that shar- 
pens our sagacity. We find them in new thoughts from 
familiar minds and in old thoughts from strange 
minds. 

Conversation is corrective. It is corrective of opin- 
ion. No other method of comparison is more favor- 
able to truth. But in this view I separate altogether 
conversation from controversy. The uncurbed expres- 
sion of free minds differently constituted and different- 
ly trained, and looking each from its own point, brings 
a subject into full elucidation. In council, not in com- 
bat, each brings to bear on the matter under view the 
15 



226 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. m 

best ideas that lie has and in the best manner. With- 
drawn in a great degree from the temptations that sur- 
round public position and formal speaking, thoughts 
come forth as each conceives them, and words are ready 
for the thoughts. We can hardly imagine any circum- 
stances better suited for a fair intellectual result ; and 
this result is yet more valuable in self-culture than in 
social culture. Nothing is better than conversation as 
a corrective of self-sufficiency. In educated conversa- 
tion a man soon finds his level. He learns more truly 
than from books, in converse with living men, to esti- 
mate his powers modestly and justly. A book is pas- 
sive : it does not repel pretension ; it does not rebuke 
vanity. Indeed, reading and study become to many 
but the nurture of conceit. If some persons value 
themselves on the books they own, it is not surprising 
that others should value themselves on the books they 
read. As knowledge grows on the thoughts in books, 
so pedantry feeds on their words, and is proud, poor, 
lean, and solitary. In conversation a man is not long 
in discovering that he alone does not know every thing, 
and that, though lie were to die, wisdom would not 
perish mth him. He quickly discovers that, though 
his mind is to him a kingdom, it is not to others a cab- 
bage garden ; and that, were the lightning to scath it, 
men would not look for the day of judgment ; nay, 
they would hardly take notice of the blank. Some in 
their especial circle are taciturn. They are choice and 
chary of their ideas. Such ideas as theirs, so grand, 
so lofty, so altogether mighty, they consider as too 
precious to be wasted in the passing change of life. 
They reserve them for state occasions. They have 



CONVERSATION. 227 

worked for them ; and they suppose the price is to be 
estimated by their labor. But we all know that there 
may be much toil and small result. The mountain in 
travail with a mouse has long been a commonplace 
fable. But a molehill might fancy its groanings 
were the gestation of an elephant. There are per- 
sons who are as grim in their silence as if the " in- 
tegral and differential calculus " was in every wrin- 
kle. Their ideas they esteem, not as pebbles, but 
rubies ; not to be placed in vulgar exposure, but to be 
safely locked up and sacredly kept out of sight. But 
bring these things imagined by their owners to be 
such gems, — bring them into the great market of 
thought, and they will not have even the currency of 
cowries. A boy writing from school to his mamma 
was reminded by his companion of something that he 
seemed to be forgetting. " O, no," said the other, 
with impressive dignity ; '' I am keeping that for a 
postscript J" Not unlike to this, an idea, or the ghost 
of an idea, not the tail of a thought, but the tail feathers 
of a thought, must have with many a special reserva- 
tion. The journalist says, " Ha ! I'll keep that for an 
article." The parson exclaims, " A capital subject for 
a sermon." Conversation dissipates all such nonsense. 
It brings words to the test of sense — of common sense, 
of impartial sense, of independent sense. A man learns 
that what he considered a great idea may be no idea of 
any sort ; that what seemed to him an originality is but 
a dying echo ; that what he esteems an ornament of 
graceful novelty may be but as the sole of an old shoe 
which a traveller has dropped in a desert and which an 
African savage finds and wears as a decoration ; that 



228 , ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

what lie admires as a flower native to the soil of genius 
may be from the seed of a wornout plant which has been 
rejected from the garden of every cultivated imagination. 
In conversation, intelligent men, comparing themselves 
among themselves, exercise mutually a silent but a 
faithful criticism, which, though just and candid, is not 
indulgent ; which, though not indulgent, is not ungener- 
ous ; and which does as much to cement a brotherly 
companionship as it ministers to mutual improvement. 
Conversation, while correcting the mind, enlarges it. 
We share in the fruits of other minds, and of minds 
more productive than our own. The power that comes 
to us from without strengthens the power that is with- 
in. A man's thought is original by the peculiarity of 
his mental constitution. So far as he has a thought 
at all, it must, in some sense, be a thought distinct 
from every other man's thought. It is shaped in the 
mould of his individual intellect ; it is colored by the 
atmosphere of his emotional and moral character. A 
man's thought is shaped by the peculiarity of his 
personal history, mental and otherwise. He has thus 
an experience, memories, feelings, and associations 
through which none but himself have gone. All these 
are more or less involved in any word that a man can 
truly bring out of himself — any word that is the tran- 
script of a soul-grown idea. The most honest man, the 
most simple-minded man, will often fail of this distinc- 
tive utterance in methodical composition and set speech. 
The individuality of his idea, of his being, are diluted 
into verbiage, or they become lost in the misty haze of 
commonplace. Conversation permits him to wait for 
the right word, and supplies the unbidden inspiration 



CONVERSATION. 229 

that can speak it rightly. Thus you gather in from 
every side the realities of mind, the realities of life. 
The poorest leaves with you something which might 
have been loss not to have acquired. This and all 
such acquirements enter into experience. Experience 
consists of feelings and knowledge transmuted into 
life. Memory and observation gather in the materials ; 
imagination and reflection work the transformation. 
Every region of apprehensible existence supplies ma- 
terials, but in nothing as in human character are ma- 
terials of such value ; and, in conversation, human char- 
acter most undesignedly reveals itself. Other men 
studied from our own position ; ourselves studied from 
theirs ; the world contemplated alternately from both : 
these, I take it, are the elements of experience ; and in 
conversation we have them all combined. 

The term " conversationist " is, I fancy, a barbarism ; 
but, for the want of a better, we must use it. To those 
who influence their fellows without formal preparation 
custom has accorded the name of conversationists. 
The most preeminent of these we may class under two 
divisions — " talkers of society" and " thinkers aloud." 
In the English tongue, I suppose we must place Samuel 
Johnson high among the " talkers of society." He 
was abundantly furnished in all the dispositions and 
accomplishments that qualify a man to be a great talk- 
er. Strong minded and strong hearted though he was, 
he hated to be long alone ; and, though pugnacious and 
self-willed, he looked for sympathy and he loved society. 
Indolent by constitution and averse to the labor of 
composition, expression in some way was a necessity 
to his vehement and teeming intellect. Reading al- 



230 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

ways and reading every thing, thinking with a con- 
stancy and versatility equal to his reading, his reflec- 
tive faculty turned all to use, and his memory lost 
nothing that was available. With his sound, piercing, 
vigorous understanding ; with his fancy, quick, bright, 
and ready ; with his hosts of words, effective in the 
heavy forces and the light ; splendid on parade and in- 
vincible in battle, — he seemed to be in one person the 
Goliah and the David of conversation ; strong to wield 
a spear that was as a weaver's beam, and nimble to 
whirl a pebble from a sling. We have in Johnson a 
most wonderful talker, as flexible as he was mighty. 
Let the day of labor or of languor close, trim the lights, 
stir up the fire, gather around this Samson of the so- 
cial mind the circle of his companions, then stimulate 
him with provocation and suggestion : his soul, moved 
by external contact, increases in its own action until 
all its powers are brought into majestic play. In di- 
rect contest, the stand was short which any opponent 
made against Johnson. But, though Johnson overcame 
his antagonists and overruled his associates, he did not 
create silence. Silence, indeed, would have been fatal 
to Johnson. His was the genius of concentration, not 
of continuity. His genius was more the genius of de- 
bate than of soliloquy. He needed interlocutors, if 
only to meet the dramatic conditions of the dialogue ; 
and some lights, though dimmer than his own, to keep 
the space through which he darted from utter darkness 
in the intervals of his flashes. Not the only speaker, 
yet the chief speaker, his supremacy was not weari- 
some. Though on occasions his behavior was over- 
bearing, yet his resources were so opulent, his com- 



CONVERSATION. 231 

mand over them so direct, that, whatever failure there 
might be of amenity, there was none of interest. His 
sharp and decisive logic ; his brief and bold retorts ; his 
illustration, as sure to its mark as the rifle ball to the 
centre of the target ; his quick and discerning criti- 
cism, meeting every turn of thought and taste ; his sage 
remark ; his rapid metamorphosis of a trite saying into 
a striking truth ; his unexpected extraction of a great 
moral from a common fact ; his apt quotation ; his anec- 
dote, sometimes grimly droll, sometimes tenderly rem- 
iniscent ; his eloquent melancholy ; his grand pathos, — 
formed a genius of colloquial power that was all his 
own. His contradiction was often more than rude. 
His wit, if strong and daring, was occasionally so mer- 
ciless that in such instances we look in vain for the 
Christian, or even for the man. His personalities were 
frequent and savage. Still these qualities, disagreea- 
ble though they were, did not nullify his better ones. 
All his thunder, all his terror, could not conceal the 
gentle heart of charity that lay behind in deep sky 
of his merciful humanity. 

Madame de Stael was one of the most brilliant talk- 
ers in a brilliant talking society. Diflerent from John- 
son in being French and a woman, in most other 
respects also she was diflerent. She was highly im- 
aginative and artistic. With some glimmering of 
German philosophy grafted on French vivacity, she 
was mystical and sentimental without being either 
superstitious or religious. Dr. Johnson, in the po- 
etic sense, had little imagination : of art he knew 
nothing ; and, from defects both in sight and hearing, of 
it he could know nothing. Doggedly English, he was 



232 ILLUSTKATIOIS^S OF GENIUS. 

pensive and melancholy without being in the least de- 
gree sentimental ; and, though both religious and super- 
stitious, he was not mystical. The doctor talked with 
individuals properly as such, and one at a time : the 
lady talked to an audience ; and, if an individual 
was addressed, it was merely as a seeming before 
the audience and for it. This most unhappy indi- 
vidual was singled out from the company as a sol- 
dier is singled from the ranks to be their flugelman. 
But, while the military flugelman is estimated by the 
rapidity and precision of his movements before the 
regiment, De Stael estimated her conversational flugel- 
man by his passiv^eness before the company. A story 
is told about her, which, no doubt, is a joke ; but it il- 
lustrates the impression of her character. In order to 
test how far her talk was unconscious monologue, her 
friends at one time placed a mute beside her. She ad- 
dressed him the whole time, and afterwards expressed 
herself with rapture on the elegance of his manners 
and the profoundness of his remarks. Dr. Johnson 
did not merely need a presence, but a presence that 
gave him an excitement ; De Stael needed nothing but 
the presence, and the excitement she supplied herself. 
Dr. Johnson had not continuity ; De Stael had it with- 
out limit. There seemed no reason why she should 
ever stop except by the loss of strength or the loss of 
life. But the lady's foibles were more amiable, as be- 
came her nature feminine, than the doctor's. With all 
her foibles, she was glorious as a woman and glorious 
as a woman of genius. Eloquent, wise, and strong as 
the most gifted men of her age, as burning in words 
as its most renowned orators, as soaring in imagina- 



CONVERSATION. 233 

tion as its most daring poets, she had all woman's 
instincts — all woman's instincts in their weakness and 
in their worth. There seems to have been in no heart 
a richer treasury than in hers of human love, indestruc- 
tible and incorruptible ; nestling with woman's fond- 
ness in the bosom of near affections, but not there 
bounded ; capable of going upward and abroad — up 
to the heights of great purposes, and out through the 
spaces of great sympathies. This love was young with 
her to the end — as young when, with tears upon with- 
ered cheeks, it flung the light of lofty praise upon her 
father's grave, as when in smiling girlhood it bound 
her to his neck. And wherever the brave struggled 
with the bad, wherever oppressed liberty put forth 
its cry or raised up its hands, wherever wrong or sor- 
row lay upon humanity, her soul was moved towards 
it ; and, whether in the written book or the uttered 
word, her soul rushed towards it with all her affec- 
tions and spoke for it with all her zeal. Without a 
trait in her nature^ little or ungentle ; wayward, but 
most amiable ; sincere, sensitive, loving ; a goddess 
when on the Olympus of composition, but, like all of 
Homer's goddesses, a very woman still ; the friend of 
talent, the benefactor of want ; as full of generosity 
as genius, — nothing but moral ice or mental mud could 
the bolts of her electric speech have failed to set on 
flame. 

Sir James Mackintosh had not the condensed logic of 
Johnson ; he had not the rich fancy of De Stael. But 
he did not browbeat like the one and he did not mo- 
nopolize like the other. Abounding in graces of kind- 
ness as well as in treasures of wisdom, he accomplished 



234 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

V 

wHat neither of the others could. He so transferred 
ideas to the minds on which he brought his own to 
bear as to leave them ignorant of their debt. He 
made them suppose that the ideas were their own. He 
was the converse of a pickpocket, with all the skill of 
enrichments which that ingenious individual uses for 
impoverishing. He put wealth silently into the mental 
pocket, which caused the one with whom he conversed to 
feel big, and rich, and fancy that he himself had made it. 
His was the noblest generosity ; that is, mental generosi- 
ty. Mackintosh is to be reckoned among the thinkers 
aloud. Deeply studied in all the moral principles and 
phenomena of man in the various aspects of his being, 
he gave out his wisdom freely — he gave it as it came 
from that calm and humane philosophy which his large 
intellect had collected and which his warm heart made 
living. But perhaps, after Socrates, we may esteem 
Coleridge as greatest among these thinkers aloud. He 
had not the practical directness of the sublime sage. 
He could not, I apprehend, go as the great Athenian did, 
with his deep- searching words, to the workshops and to 
the market-places. The keen, consecutive ratiocina- 
tion, broken in seeming, but irrefragable in spirit, which 
distinguished the Grecian thinker, was not found in 
the English one. Nor had the English thinker that 
perfect method of dialectics which the Grecian had — 
that method, calm, passionless, unswerving ; to error 
as the scrutiny of a soul-discerning spirit, and to 
sophistry as a resistless judgment. It was not the 
property of Coleridge, as it was of Socrates, to exhaust 
a single position and to grapple with individual minds ; 
but, like Socrates, his influence was by thoughts cast 



CONVEliSATION. 235 

near at hand and carried far abroad. Like Socrates, 
his influence was oral, yet profound ; sown among his 
contemporaries, but bearing fruit to his successors. Like 
Socrates, he was a teacher of teachers. He was a teach- 
er, not so much by the communication of knowledge 
as by leading men to feel their ignorance, by stimulat- 
ing in them a spirit of inquiry, by driving them back 
upon principles, by bringing their souls into contact 
with the mysteries of existence, and by holding up to 
them the infinite loveliness of truth and virtue. Col- 
eridge did not possess the Socratic intensity and unity- 
of intellect. He could not so join the positive and the 
polemic ; but he could, as the ancient seer could not, 
so combine the reason and the imagination, both in 
their divinest spheres, that philosophy was music and 
thinking became a song. As he advanced in his spec- 
ulation, the imagination bore his reasoning upward, 
until the logician was the lyrist and thought was 
beauty ; and both, one in truth and one in poetry, 
swelled out the tones of his eloquence to the rhythm 
and the measure of an inspired rhapsodist. 

I have said enough, I trust, in this essay to show 
that I mean by conversation no pedantic, no stilted, 
no sentence -making barter of words, but a free, gener- 
ous commerce of genuine minds. I esteem nothing 
as conversation, socially regarded, that is not of the oc- 
casion, easy and spontaneous. Elaborateness is detest- 
able ; and, if any man has the appearance of being 
elaborate when in reality he is not, then he is to be 
pitied ; for he will be charged with a great fault when 
he is only afflicted with a great misfortune. Cramming 
beforehand for talk is a crime, for it is a preparation 



236 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

to torture ; and, being done with malice prepense, it is 
worthy of all condemnation without benefit of cler- 
gy. Prearranged jokes are worse than treason. Man- 
ufactured wit is as guilty as conspiracy. Formal ar- 
gumentation deserves the summary extinction of re- 
bellion. " Whences and thences," "wherefores and 
therefores," have no more business in Christian con- 
versation than Aristotle has in the list of Christian 
saints. Syllogisms, like swords, are laid aside in mod- 
ern intercourse. An offhand pun may be endured, 
sometimes it may be enjoyed ; but a disciplined punster 
is intolerable, as great a pest as a popular air, even 
as Old Folks at Home, on a barrel organ or on a pen- 
ny whistle. " Conversation," some one may say, " as 
thus described, requires special gifts and no small 
culture." Not so ; it is true that I have illustrated 
my topic by its best examples ; these do not exclude, 
but imply, gradations. Genius we cannot look for in 
social intercourse ; for it is a rare thing among men, 
and is often shy of words that must be spoken to a 
listening circle. We may not look for peculiar endow- 
ments in social intercourse ; but we may for a pure, a 
humane, and an intelligent spirit. Indeed, in the ex- 
ercise of gossip, of censure, and much of very good- 
natured calumny, there is often the exercise of consid- 
erable talent. A subtlety and force of analysis is 
frequently employed on a neighbor's character that 
would have solved a problem in science, opened a 
knotty point in law, cleared a dark corner in history, or 
mastered the grammar of a difficult language. In this 
exercise we may notice instances of spirited individ- 
ualizing and of very distinctive character painting, 



CONVERSATION. 237 

which, by the execution, would win our admiration if 
the animus of it did not forbid us to be pleased. The 
inventive faculty is seldom sluggish in it either, nor 
is the ratiocinative ; and arguments from analogy, ar- 
guments from hypothesis, are pursued with such in- 
genuity, and made so successfully to supply the want 
of facts^ that, if used in scholastic universities, they 
could not fail of the prizes awarded to senior sophis- 
ters. This, to say no worse, is a notable waste of 
power. The personal in conversation is always dan- 
gerous ; for the individual can seldom be safely sub- 
ject to conversational criticism. Such criticism scarce- 
ly ever ends but in causing harm to both its agents and 
its objects. 

Conversation has, as I have said, gradations. Sim- 
ple it may be, and most familiar ; but no method of 
presenting thought admits of more dignity or perma- 
nency. Much of the most enduring literature has this 
form. The finest parts of the best fictions are the 
conversational parts. The whole substance of the 
drama, both in tragedy and comedy, takes the conversa- 
tional form. With a true instinct of fitness, there is 
no thought so deep or high which might not in this 
method find expression, and there is no place where it 
might not be uttered — in the store, in the workshop, in 
the field, in the steamboat, in the stage, or on the rail- 
road. The great olden sages gave out their philoso- 
phies without parade. Socrates taught wherever he 
could interest a listener. He taught because he did not 
seem to teach. It is true, there is authority in wisdom 
and virtue which in all places gives them propriety and 
power ; but this is an authority which every honest 



238 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

and thinking man may in his degree possess. Still, 
if we carry this view no farther than these examples, 
they are sufficient to show the dignity which the con- 
versational method can claim. Conversations held on 
the waysides of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem 
scattered the seeds of a new life in the world. Con- 
versations held with laborious men on the shores of 
lakes, in the bosom of the lonely mountain, went 
forth as a resistless power ; they swept off thrones, 
they dissolved empires. The whisper of an eternal idea 
broke the sceptre of Rome and crushed the might of 
the Caesars. 



WORDSWORTH. 

The mind of Wordsworth worked mainly within the 
limits of personal consciousness and personal experi- 
ence. In this Wordsworth was different from Shelley. 
Shelley was in all his faculties impersonal. The very 
being of Shelley seemed to be ideas imbodied in the 
flesh. His language is as if it belonged to some region 
of abstract thought before it became subject to the 
limits of an incarnate individualism. Sense, memory, 
reason, imagination, in Shelley, burst all the limits of 
personality and found scope only in the boundless. The 
life of his genius was in the universe ; and whatever cir- 
cumscribed thought was to him a falsehood or an evil. 
This powerful tendency coming early into resistance, 
not with the circumscriptions of mere nature only, but 
also with the strong embattlements of historic beliefs 
and influences, made him a rebel and an outcast. In- 
tellect, pure, piercing, inquisitive, exacting, aspiring, 
far-reaching, was the dominant power in the mind of 
Shelley. It pressed him ever upon the barriers of the 
known, and it rendered him impatient within the circle 
of the knowable. Into contact with existing things 
he brought ideas of the unconditioned and the abso- 
lute ; and, as facts in every direction clashed with these 
ideas, his genius worked only in the void or in the 

(239) 



240 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

struggle of a hopeless contest. Yet this would not 
have been the case but for other elements of his mind- 
Had it not been for the poetic imagination, his intellect, 
without conflict with the actual, would have expatiated 
freely in the region of the speculative ; and in that re- 
gion it might have exhibited the subtlety of a mediae- 
val schoolman or the continuity of a modern German ; 
it might have rivalled the metaphysics of an Aquinas 
or a Hegel. Even with the poetic spirit, had it not 
been for the zeal of humanity, this wonderful intellect 
and imagination might have taken form in an unpo- 
lemic poetry — a poetry that would have been as posi- 
tive as it was sublime, the grandest union that the soul 
of man has yet imbodied of the logical, the emotional, 
and the ideal. But it happens, by an extraordinary 
paradox of genius, that Shelley's poetry is the most 
gorgeous, yet the most abstract ; the most intellect- 
ual, yet the most luxuriant ; the most remote from 
common experience, and yet the most offensive to com- 
mon belief. 

Such was not the action of intellect in Wordsworth. 
His intellect was, indeed, as living, and, in its way, it 
was as far from common things ; but still it was per- 
sonal. It lived, indeed, as in a measureless universe, 
but was a universe of which its own consciousness was 
the centre. It lived as in a great kindred of human- 
ity ; but it was an humanity estimated from the point 
of immediate and personal contemplation. The intel- 
lect of Wordsworth had no mighty range of specula- 
tion. It wanted saliency and impassioned boldness ; 
and this was not because it was conservative, for the 
intellect of conservatism may be as startling as that of 



WOKDSAVORTH. 241 

innovation ; it was because it was individual and in- 
ward. It was not like that of Burke, which found a new 
philosophy for old authority ; it was not like that of 
Coleridge, which found old authority for a new philos- 
ophy : yet the intellect of Wordsworth was as little com- 
monplace as any man's. It started no theory except one 
of life, which it constantly falsifies ; and one of poetry, 
which it utterly disregards : for the rest, it was content 
to labor in the deepest quiet and within the range of its 
own experience. Yet the intellect of Wordsworth was 
no more coincident with the common actual than was 
that of the daring and discursive Shelley. It dreamed 
as his did ; but the dream was not so wild. It was 
nearer to the home, and it had more affinity with the vis- 
ions, of ordinary mortals. It was in dream that Words- 
worth had the soundest mind ; it was in it that his 
deepest wisdom lay ; and it was in it that he was most 
himself. It was when he dreamed he was most alive ; 
at least he was most in that life which most awakens 
life in others. It was in the dream of gentle thought 
that visions pure and good came up from his heart into 
his imagination, in which the beauty of the afiections 
was made lustrous with poetic splendor ; but assured- 
ly it was not in such a dream that he wrote his sonnets 
on capital punishment. 

The intellect of Wordsworth was not greatly en.- 
larged by scholarship. In this point, at least, it was 
not Miltonic — a designation which, in other respects, 
is often applied to it. It was not enriched, as Milton's 
was, with treasures of all story and all thought ; it 
lived not, as his did, familiarly with the olden gods, 
and with the consciousness that all the mighty past 
16 



242 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

was its memory. Neither was it varied with rare and 
curious learning such as decorated the mind of his 
friend Southey ; nor was it filled with quaint and gen- 
ial reading such as delighted the soul of Lamb. The 
amount which Wordsworth appropriated from the stores 
of wealth that elect genius has left humanity was only 
meagre. It contained no ample contribution from clas- 
sical antiquity, considering that the poet was a man of 
regular education; it had no gatherings from the dim, 
mystic, and wondrous East, and none from the vis- 
ionary and ideal erudition of myriad-minded Germany. 
The intellect of Wordsworth was as little scientific as 
it was scholarly ; and, much as he loved Nature, it 
does not appear that any of the natural sciences 
charmed him. We do not learn that he took interest 
in astronomy, geology, geography, botany, chemistry, 
or any other systematic form under which the under- 
standing classifies the phenomena or facts of matter. 
In this respect Wordsworth was a genuine old Hebrew. 
The universe was to him an unbroken whole. He did 
not divide or analyze it. His society with Nature was 
not study ^ but communion ; not a notation of appear- 
ances, but an intercourse of spirit : he did not exam- 
ine it in its laws, but felt it in its life. Were it not 
for this entireness of Nature in Wordsworth's appre- 
hension of it, — therefore his feeling of its unity, vi- 
tality, and infinity, — Wordsworth's idea of the uni- 
verse would have been as circumscribed as was his 
scholarship. But such could not be the case with a 
man who held the relations which Wordsworth did 
with Nature. He saw not much of crowds ; he went 
but unfrequently abroad ; he spent his life with the 



WORDSWORTH. 243 

girdle of mountains and lakes around him ; the same 
neighborhood and a few faces were day after day pres- 
ent to his sight from manhood to old age ; but in this 
limitation of objects and space there was nothing to 
set limits to his thoughts. Nature is immortal and 
continuous in its life ; it is without restriction in its 
compass ; whatever spot we stand on serves as the 
centre of immensity ; whatever hour we live in as the 
dividing point of the eternities. No matter how small 
the space on which we dwell or on which we move, Na- 
ture is always large to mind ; it raises no barriers 
against thought and it puts no stoppage on emotion. A 
young girl in a silent Scottish glen about the hour of 
sunset, meeting Wordsworth and his sister, said, in 
replying to an inquiry of theirs, " What, ye are step- 
ping westward ? " This to most persons would seem 
a very ordinary expression ; and so it was ; but it laid 
hold of Wordsworth's imagination, and there it became 
most suggestive and most expansive. Commonly that 
which to general minds had nothing became to his the 
most fruitful. He found hidden import in the phrases 
of unthinking speech, because he looked under the 
phrases for those native instincts which take no heed 
of their own utterance ; he found subtle truth in words, 
in forms of words, which are often expressed without the 
intention and listened to without the suspicion of a 
meaning ; and sounds that scarcely stir the apathy of 
sense had for him secrets of life which he was ever vigi- 
lant to seize and bring to light. The brief expression 
of this rustic girl put his spirit into action ; it unbound 
his thoughts from local space and gave his soul an impe- 
tus into the great heyond. The illimitable, the infinite, 



244 ILLUSTEATIONS OF GENIUS. 

in the universe as the sphere of man seems to have been 
suggested by the maiden's words. The suggestion 
came in this instance from a voice ; but Wordsworth 
would have found a like significance in a flower, in a 
cloud, in the gleam of a star, or in the ripple of a 
stream. The elementary in human life, as the spirit- 
ual and articulate portion of Nature, as the heart of 
its mystery and the utterance of its struggles, was that 
into which the intellect of Wordsworth the most pro- 
foundly entered. His thoughts on man have often a 
deep, a most affecting, and a most wonderful music in 
them. The melody of them belongs to the innermost 
whisperings of the soul ; and it must be listened for in 
patience, reverence, loneliness, and silence. There 
is tenderness in such thoughts and in the speech and 
tones of Wordsworth. They are full with the pathos 
of the moral life ; to borrow from himself a phrase, 
" the still, sad music of humanity." But there is no 
less strength in them than sweetness ; for they include 
the grand as well as the lowly of man's existence and 
destiny. But Wordsworth could not discern or repre- 
sent man individually. The story of a life or action, 
with its own distinct and inherent interest, required a 
concentration of attention on the person, a separation 
of incidents from principles, and the art of making 
facts, without reference to their spiritual associations 
in the experience of the writer, reveal their own mean- 
ing, and in that meaning produce the intended effect. 
All this was foreign to the mind of Wordsworth ; and 
therefore Wordsworth could not dramatize. With 
whatever state or stage of humanity Wordsworth is 
.concerned, his attention is fixed on the inward and the 



WORDSWORTH. 245 

universal : that which is made visible is for the sake 
of that which is not seen ; and that which is hut seen 
in part is intended to suggest that which pertains to 
the essence of the whole. Peter and James, in the 
mind of Wordsworth, are not separate and concrete 
men ; they are rather parts of abstract man. They 
cannot, therefore, be positive characters. They have 
no distinct integrity of being ; they have no indivisible 
personality. They are indications, not individuals; 
and they exist for the sake of what they imply or what 
they illustrate. They have no independent value in 
themselves. They are not as Othello or FalstafF, Par- 
son Adams or Bailie Jar vie, that have in their walk 
and conversation their sufficient reason of existence. 
In the region of ideal objects these characters obtain 
an actualized, a determinate, appointment and destiny. 
It is not intended that the mind shall go beyond them, 
but stop at them ; it is not intended that the mind shall 
examine all around them, but be entirely content within 
them. In themselves they hold a complete life ; and we 
inquire nothing further and we ask for nothing more. 
It is not thus with the men of Wordsworth. Peter and 
John, as he presents them to us, are not of interest, I 
repeat, for what they are, but for what they signify. 
They stand for foregone conclusions in the poet's 
mind ; and these conclusions infold sublime and im- 
pressive truths, if we have but sympathy and philoso- 
phy to find them out. Peter and James, no doubt, 
have distinct relations to suffering or action, or they 
would be mere names devoid of all meaning and all 
use ; but the suffering or action has its interest, not 
from its connection with Peter or James, but for its 



246 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

connection with humanity. And in this incidental re- 
mark I have stated most completely the difference be- 
tween the moral and the dramatic. In Wordsworth 
the moral is perfect ; the dramatic does not exist at all. 
That in which men are the same is the basis of the 
moral ; that in which they are diverse is the basis of 
the dramatic. But it is with the common only, and 
not with the distinctive,, that genius can work when it 
philosophizes within the sphere of its own individual 
existence. Every man has in himself the elements of 
all men ; and when a man has a deep and thoughtful 
genius he can find in himself infinite illustrations of 
things common to all men. If, however, he would 
have, not illustrations, but individualities, he must go 
out of himself; his creations must be unmistakable 
personalities, alike distinct from the idiosyncrasy of 
his own character and from mere specifications of ab- 
stract humanity. But though Wordsworth was his 
ovv^n study, he was not an egotist : he looked within 
himself for the essentials in which he had community 
with his kind and connection with the infinite. The 
immeasurable idea, or the undeveloped possible, Words- 
worth discerned within the limits of the actual. With 
him " the child is father of the man," and the man the 
child of the immortal. 

It is no part of my design to complicate these remarks 
by any disquisition on imagination in general, or on 
Wordsworth's imagination in particular. The philoso- 
phy of imagination has been abundantly discussed, and 
criticism has left little to be said on that of Words- 
worth. Imagination, as all grant, is an essential facul- 
ty in every mind of decisive originality. Without it 



WORDSWORTH. . 247 

no man can be a great thinker, a great inventor, a great 
constructor, a great ruler, nor even a great fighter. 
The presence and activity of imagination are implied, 
then, in Wordsworth's originality : the kind of im- 
agination is determined in his being a poet ; the de- 
gree of it, other energies being sufficient, is manifested 
in his being a great poet. Imagination in the poet, in 
addition to the power it exercises in the mind simply, 
has a special fulness of life — of life concentrative, in 
the spiritual intensity of his own soul ; of life diffu- 
sive, in the universal sensibility, in the pervading con- 
sciousness, in the depth of meaning which all things 
have in his apprehension of them ; of life communica- 
tive, in the fervor, the inspiration, and the force which 
he imparts to such spirits as he brings into sympathy 
with his own spirit. That Wordsworth had copious 
wealth of this life, — that in its concentrative, diffu- 
sive, and communicative potency it thoroughly vital- 
ized his genius, — the least candid student of his 
poetry must feel, must confess ; and therefore, in rela- 
tion both to the quality and the quantity of it, his 
place is in the highest rank of poets. But to trace 
this life through the modifications and peculiarities 
which render it distinctive and Wordsworthian, even 
if it were not an unnecessary task, forms, as I have 
said, no part of my design. What was the habit of 
mind which governed Wordsworth's faculties, which 
acted through them as a law of unity — the habit 
which harmonized into one life of soul the universe of 
matter and of spirit, social affinities and isolated 
thought, and which transmuted into poetry the whole 
experience thus resulting, in all its subtleties and in 



248 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

all its range ? What, I inquire, was this dominating 
and determining habit of mind ? It was not passion ; 
that is, passion in the sense of tumultuous energy or 
of craving desire. Wordsworth's mind was serene in 
its action and his life in its relations. No more fitting 
term than serenity can we find to designate the character 
of his mind and life. But serenity implies much ; it 
implies calmness, light, and order ; and these, in a high 
degree, belonged to such serenity as pervaded the in- 
ward and the outward existence of Wordsworth. Spir- 
itual heat, strength, and purpose it implies also ; and, 
so far as passion through these centres its power in the 
soul, Wordsworth had passion, as every man must have 
who acts on moral thought, emotion, or imagination. 
But it was not in him, as it was in some, an electric 
fire, which in a moment flashes out of darkness, and 
in that moment kindles a quenchless light or creates 
an immortal beauty. It was not, as it was in others, 
an impetuous struggle of the spirit to find sufficiency 
in things out of, or foreign to, itself, turning back upon 
itself at last in the song of grief and the wail of dis- 
appointment. Glory Wordsworth neither despised nor 
coveted ; of fame his own self-consciousness made him 
certain or independent ; to luxury his temperance ren- 
dered him indifierent ; and for wealth he had no such 
desire as ever moved him to exertion. Such, however, 
seemed to compensate him for the long unsalableness 
of his works ; and, though his poetry would have left 
him to starve, kind friends and good fortune enriched 
him with ample competence. Listless, like most men 
of genius, to plant, to sow, or gather in the field of 
Mammon, he was careful, as most men of genius are 



WORDSWORTH. 249 

notj to keep, and not to scatter, that which the care of 
others had put into his garners. Nor had Wordsworth 
passion in the sense of any might of zeal or eagerness 
of aspiration. He had none of those agonies of soul 
with which largely susceptible natures have to contend, 
and through which, in a stormy discipline, they work 
their way to peace. He had none of that overflooding 
enthusiasm which so often agitates great hearts, bewil- 
ders the noblest heads, and for a time disorders the 
holiest, the wisest lives. He never lost himself; he 
had no sublime excess. The dream of pantisocracy, in 
which he shared the illusion of Coleridge and Southey, 
was with any of them but a doze ; and Wordsworth 
was the first to awake from it. His brief sympathy 
with the French revolution was a mere mistake ; and 
the discovery of his error gave him a shock which he 
did not recover from for the rest of his days. It was 
as if a person should come in ignorance close to the 
torrent of Niagara while it was hidden in the mist, 
and find the terrible might of the cataract where he ex- 
pected only the freshness of a shower. The revulsion 
and reaction were such upon the mind of Wordsworth 
that every movement was afterwards abhorrent to him 
which the popular element invigorated. He fell back 
into stringent and restrictive conservatism, centred him- 
self in recluse retirement, and became strong, if not in- 
tolerant, in sentiments and tastes to which many modern 
tendencies and agencies were ungracious and repulsive. 
No transition from the old shone to him with promise 
for the new ; innovation boded only threatening ; and 
his social faith had no hopes behind the shadows of 
his fears. The growth of popular influence disturbed 



250 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

his ideas of government ; tlie aggregation of effort in 
many plans for general improvement offended the in- 
wardness of his moral feelings ; the despotic predomi- 
nance which mechanical forces, as he apprehended, 
were to have in civilization, was at once hateful to his 
spiritual and his aesthetic inclinations. The most ap- 
plauded manifestations of the times, mental and ma- 
terial, alarmed and annoyed him. Infant schools he 
disliked, because they interfered with domestic affec- 
tions. Towards the Bible Society he was cold, because 
it tended, as he thought, to produce " an unnatural al- 
liance of sects." Manufactures disturbed his poetical 
associations, and railroads destroyed the picturesque. 
But, seeing that much of the future must be created 
by these agencies, our hope for good to the future com- 
pels us to believe them better than they were esteemed 
in the philosophy of Wordsworth ; and this hope, 
which the logic of his philosophy might rebuke, the 
spirit of his poetry sustains. 

The genius of Wordsworth had no dependence upon 
sympathy. Wordsworth was not adhesive ; neither was 
he attractive. He did not attach himself personally to 
individuals. In very boyhood he had no heart compan- 
ionships. In that season when the mind is the most so- 
cial and the most confiding, his spirit dwelt alone. At 
no time in his course did he share his thoughts with 
others ; and none dared to ask him to partake of theirs. 
Out of his domestic circle he had but few intimates ; and 
even these seem to have loved him rather with the af- 
fection of devotion than with the affection of freedom. 
A recluse by temperament and circumstances, his corre- 
spondence was of necessity limited ; but within its closest 



WORDSWORTH. 251 

range it is measured, dry, and cold : such, at least, is tlie 
general character of the letters which have been made 
public. In one instance of great and unexpected grief 
in the loss of a shipwrecked brother, and in other near 
afflictions, the heart speaks out, and natural sorrow as- 
serts its privilege of tears and utterance. Yet no man 
ever gained a more loyal devotion by his words than 
did Wordsworth. When his writings were scouted and 
ridiculed, when his reviewers almost outnumbered his 
readers, and when every reviewer was a scoffer, there 
were, in private, young and burning minds who took 
his side with heroic sympathy, who gave themselves to 
his cause with the enthusiasm of loyalty, and who 
brought to him an admiration unquestioning and un- 
qualified. Looking at Wordsworth in these relations, 
one is amazed at the force of his stoicism, stoicism in 
both the stoic aspects — strength on the one side and 
impassiveness on the other ; for, while he presents an 
unshaken calmness to his critics, he is startled into no 
gratified surprise by the ardor of his friends. Strong 
and self-sustained, he stands between them both ; and 
he is neither disturbed by the obloquy of the one nor 
exultant in the homage of the other. Yet his were 
circumstances in which much less devotion might move 
the strongest man and win from him the recognition 
of a gratified heart without discredit to his self-respect, 
his independence, or his equanimity. The great soul, 
indeed, has not its power from without, and it is not 
depressed or elevated by every caprice of censure or 
applause. Its power is in itself; it is strong in the 
centre of its consciousness, and it holds a kingly firm- 
ness equally to blame and censure. Still there are 



252 ILLUSTKATIONS 0¥ GEKIUS. 

times wlien adversity and injustice that cannot shake 
it will overcloud it : the smile then of a generous face 
shines as a star in the gloom ; the mind's eye brightens 
with the gladness of its light and hails it in the beauty 
of its rising. The will, mighty in the sense of virtue, 
can bear itself firmly against neglect, can meet un- 
merited contempt with lofty patience ; the judgment, 
assured of worth in that which as yet the many do not 
understand, can wait calmly for the equity of time and 
thought ; but still the heart will bound lovingly to the 
good word of the generous, and be ready to welcome 
to its agections the man that comes boldly and single 
minded with his tribute and waits not for the multi- 
tude. There were some who came thus to Wordsworth ; 
but so it does not appear they ever moved him. Alone 
in the midst of scornful criticism, studious in a soli- 
tude that was never awakened by the voice of public 
applause, working on from year to year without profit 
and without praise, the strength in Wordsworth of in- 
sensibility to his admirers is more wonderful than his 
strength of fortitude against his opponents. Many of 
these men became subsequently distinguished in the 
commonwealth of letters ; but it does not appear that 
Wordsworth recognized them with any literary sympa- 
thy. Indeed, with respect to intellectual and imaginative 
sympathy, if the spirit of cultivated humanity were as 
that of the bard of Rydal, the sphere of literature 
would be that of poetry — the sphere of poetry would 
be that of Wordsworth : then, if poetry were not to 
cease, Wordsworth must be the poet to every man, or 
every man must be a poet to himself. There is one 
thing that may be said of Wordsworth, — and it im- 



WORDSWORTH. 253 

plies no little grandeur in him of whom it may be truly 
said, — that all the praise he had came to him without 
his seeking, and that, hard as the path was on which 
he travelled to his fame, he tried to smooth no step of 
it by the smallest bribe to any man's self-compla- 
cency. 

Some space back I started an inquiry, and left it 
there unanswered. The intervening reflections by 
which I have postponed the answer have been in- 
tended, not only to lead to it, but also to render it 
more distinct and definite ; for it has not been my pur- 
pose to criticize in its wholeness the genius of Words- 
worth or to survey at large the workings of his poetic 
faculty, but to determine, if I could, that in the ac- 
tion of his mind which constitutes the poet's peculi- 
arity. And thus we come back to the inquiry : 
Through what process or mental habit was so much 
genius in this man unfolded ? How came the transmu- 
tation of the life of this man into poetry — into poetry 
grand, and full, and permanent ? How was so much 
wealth brought out from a man so seclusive in his temper, 
so confined in his position, so unexcitable and' so unex- 
pansive ? I answer, simply, that the genius of Words- 
worth was developed by meditation — by meditation 
which in all his waking hours was continuous as breath 
itself, and which, by susceptibility that was ever fresh 
and by inward thinking that was ever active, was in- 
finitely suggestive and creative. This mental habit 
stood to him for travel, for throngs, for reading, for 
wide discourse with men, for all the means by which 
other minds that obtain special influence discipline 
their faculties and gather their experience. To a man 



254 ILLXJSTIIA.TIONS OF GENIUS. 

of Wordsworth's meditative power, the space on the 
surface of the earth with w^hich his visible presence 
is connected is nothing in the sphere of limitless be- 
ing with which his soul is always in conscious re- 
lation. The geometer needs but a line between no 
very distant points to form the base of a triangle which 
will carry his demonstrations to the stars ; and the moral 
thinker needs but a definite range of nature and human- 
ity in which to find all the principles and problems that 
mystery and eternity can suggest. These principles and 
problems are involved, indeed, in all that he can spirit- 
ually contemplate ; and there is nothing that he cannot 
so contemplate. They are in his inward and in his 
outward life ; in the speculations and the fancies, in 
the fears and in the delights, that busy his brain and 
agitate his breast ; in the story of his home ; in the 
changes of his fortune ; in the relation of his part to 
the drama of society, to the drama of humanity, 
played here upon an earthly stage in the midst of the 
immense and the immortal. These problems and prin- 
ciples are in the universe, in time, in space, in matter, 
in permanence and change, in decay and renovation, in 
life and death, in light and beauty that gladden hearts 
with the joy of love, in force, in fate, in vastness, in 
the terrible, in the boundless, the dreary, the immeas- 
urable night in which thought is lost, and faith af- 
frighted, and the soul cries aloud for help from the 
depths of her distress. Man has his soul every where ; 
and, if he is but awake to its intimations, it is every 
where to him a source of endless revelations. Properly, 
life is vigilance of mind; and all facts and all objects 
are instinct to the living mind mth the spirit of thought 



"VVORDSWORTH. 255 

and the impulse of emotion. The life thus quickened 
by meditation in a man himself causes him to apprehend 
in every other a correspondent life. The essentials of 
this life he recognizes in every man in whom he recog- 
nizes a conscious humanity ; he discerns within him 
the elemental faculties that animate and glorify his own 
existence ; he beholds him, as he himself is, in the 
midst of the infinite, and bound to it by like relations. 
Every man, as such a mind will view him, is a mem- 
ber of the vital whole of our great humanity. Every 
man, too, in the philosophy of such an inward thinker, 
is a part of that sublime order of realities with which 
the senses deal not ; and thus every man he looks on 
has a grandeur and a worth of being infinitely above 
the conditions of animal and visible existence. The 
limits which bound the steps are no limits to the 
thoughts ; the horizon that shuts in the vision of the 
eye has no circumscription for the vision of imagina- 
tion ; and the power that exhausts the capacity of do- 
ing leaves unexhausted and inexhaustible the capacity 
of loving. As intellect transcends motion, as imagina- 
tion transcends sight, as aspiration transcends execu- 
tion, so love is greater than deed, image, or idea, as it 
is love that imparts to deed, image, or idea its life, its 
grandeur, or its beauty. No mind, therefore, can be 
straitened that is gifted with the ability and the dis- 
position to meditate, and in whose meditation reason, 
imagination, and afiection unite with the peace of vir- 
tue and the love of truth. As it never can be dead- 
ened in itself, as it never can be separated from hu- 
manity and the universe, it can never fail of the best 
excitement and of the most worthy interest. To Words- 



256 ILLUSTRATIONS OP GENIUS. 

wortli, then, the remoteness of cities and the absence 
of throngs had nothing that he could regard as loss. 
Around him were the lakes and mountains ; above him 
was the sky ; and as to the visible in Nature, what 
more could he desire ? Form and hue, with untold 
variety in their changes, he had, as magnificent and as 
lovely as he could have had on any space of equal 
measure beneath the sun. With these forms, hues, 
and changes his mind was ever mingling ; and with 
such intensity of sympathy as he had with them, 
with such constancy of observation, they presented to 
him combinations which none before had noticed, and 
he drew from them meanings of which none before had 
conjectured. He was rewarded by Nature for his vigi- 
lance by appearances which others had not seen ; and 
he was rewarded also by Nature for his thought in the 
discovery of analogies between his spirit and all things 
with which his spirit held communion of which others 
had never dreamed. There was no varying shape of 
cloud which he was not quick to note, and there was 
no shape to which cloud varied that did not bring new 
images to his fancy or suggest new ponderings to the 
moral reason. So he was with all things, and especial- 
ly with things that feel. The insect, the bird, the 
brute spoke all to his intellect and his heart ; and he 
lived among them as beings that with himself were 
creatures of God and sharers of life. There was, too, 
in every human spirit, as he esteemed it, a depth un- 
fathomable, a world illimitable ; and therefore there 
was none so mean as to have a story without sublimity. 
What more, then, did Wordsworth require, what more 
did he need, than his hillslopes, his dells, his valleys, 



WORDSWOETH, 257 

and his cottagers r In the one he found the fulness 
of Nature, in the other the essentials of humanity; 
and through his meditative communion with both 
he found for himself, and he gave to others, im- 
perishable treasures of sensibility and wisdom. If 
we would know what depths of wealth Wordsworth 
had in meditation, we have but to take a hasty 
glance along his poem of The Excursion, and then to 
read it attentively. In our hasty glance it will appear 
meagre, bald, and mean ; in our attentive reading it 
will be rich to fulness. As the eye runs carelessly on- 
ward, an account of an idle lounger among the hills 
attracts its notice. This lounger meets with a Scotch 
Presbyterian peddler : they become interested in each 
other and fall into gossip. Through a number of 
summer hours they are wonderfully companionable ; 
they interchange mind with mind ; and to this hasty 
view much of what they say will appear prosy mor- 
alizing. A solitary comes across them in their in- 
tercourse — a man to whom experience and knowl- 
edge brought only disappointment. The three join 
together in more talk. When the talk is exhausted 
they separate ; and thus the drama closes. Noth- 
ing more barren is conceivable ; and here and there, 
when the mind is as superficially connected with 
the subject matter as the eye, nothing appears more 
ridiculous. Read attentively, read with thought and 
sympathy, read with the inward nature awake and ac- 
tive ; then this outline is filled with the profoundest 
moral cogitation and wonderful picturings of beauty — 
with impressive ideas of man as he lives in himself, 
in society, as he is related to the Eternal and the 
17 



258 ILLUSTEATIOXS OF GENIUS. 

Unknown. So studied, the poem interests the reason by 
its speculations, the fancy by its imagery, the heart by 
its narratives ; it excites the whole man by all in him 
that is spiritually noble, until he feels a bigger life than 
he fancies could have ever panted in the grandest of 
the olden gods — a greater life, indeed, because mak- 
ing itself felt in the consciousness of mysterious and 
immortal being. And what is the difference between 
these two aspects of the poem ? It is that one gives 
us but the naked outlines of the poet's notes, and the 
other gives us the action of the poet's soul ; that in 
the one we have only his marks, and in the other his 
meditations. 

As in The Excursion, so in most of Wordsworth's 
other poems, we discover the elements of his power in 
the depth, the continuity, and the compass of his medi- 
tative energy. Wordsworth has no inventiveness in 
incident, and he has no variety. He has no progres- 
sive movement in action, no concealments, no excita- 
tion of amazement, and no stimulus of curiosity. The 
supernatural he discards, and in the strongly impas- 
sioned his attempts are failures. But go with him be- 
low the surface ; stop not in the symbol, but pierce to 
the idea ; and then he is revealed to you as a soul of 
rare poetic and philosophic insight. He has a wonder- 
ful discernment of the human spirit in its most remote 
and most inaccessible experience. Who has entered 
as he into the mysteries of childhood ? I do not ad- 
duce as evidence of this his extraordinary poem On 
the Intimations of Immortality in the Recollections of 
Childhood ; I would refer to his interpretations gen- 
erally of childhood. Simple childhood, — who can 



WORDSWOHTH. 259 

know it ? To look on the child and feel what to him- 
self he is ; to give the child back to the mind of grown 
maturity ; to restore the first age of life to advanced 
experience ; to recover it and bring it clearly into view 
from beneath a chaos of artificialisms which have over- 
laid it, — this it requires a most rare faculty to accom- 
plish. It is that mysterious sympathy in which the 
prophetic seems included in the poetic faculty. Actual 
childhood not many can conceive. Most persons have 
absolutely lost their own ; and of the outward signs 
which mark it in the young before them they have for- 
gotten the inward import. It is to them a mere illusion, 
lying far back in the dimness of memory, and falsely 
as well as obscurely reflected through the long and 
changeful vista of years and passions. It is for this 
reason that the speech of the mature about children 
seems generally to children but foolishness : to them it 
is unreal and untrue — unreal to what they feel and 
untrue to what they know. Speak to a child what 
he feels to be a reality and a truth, he is at once af- 
fected and impressed ; but so to speak to the child's 
deepest consciousness belongs to the most purely wise. 
To understand, then, the spirit of childhood is the 
gift of special souls ; and it was the gift of Words- 
worth. 

The meditative energy of Wordsworth's genius gives 
to his poetry its pervading inwardness, as it gave to 
his mind its inflexible self-consciousness and to that 
consciousness its independent individualism. The in- 
herent force of his poetic faculty was to him in its 
mere activity an aflluent inheritance. In full jdos- 
session of his soul and all things made living by 



260 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

his soul, he had the abundance of a great content. 
This was the substance of a settled peace, which was 
securely his, unconnected with the accidents of fortune. 
The passion for fame did not agitate his calmness, but 
rather made it deeper by the strength of a supreme and 
majestic patience. Wordsworth could at no time have 
been indifferent to money or applause, for during some 
years he was poor, and there is no man who does not 
desire encouragement ; yet the absence of both neither 
depressed his spirit nor slackened his diligence. He 
abated no jot of heart or hope, but worked along in the 
quietness of inward power and in the serene faith that 
something in his work was destined not to perish. Con- 
sidering how needful sympathy is to the sensibility of the 
poetic nature, it is not easy for us to comprehend Words- 
worth's increasing productiveness in spite of coldness 
and silence. And now that we have the secret things of 
his experience in his Memoirs, we are made aware that 
this coldness and silence were beyond any general idea 
we had formed of his unpopularity ; though beyond that 
it seemed hard to go. But still he forsook not what he Re- 
garded as his mission. Subj ects arose to him ; he brooded 
them into poetry ; and he had no doubt that their birth 
was for immortality. The assured way in which he spoke 
of poems which none would buy or read had once an air 
of the ludicrous ; but now we can see in such confidence 
an element of his greatness. After many years, a hun- 
dred dollars would exceed all the money which his poetry 
put into his purse ; and this was in a time when poetry 
was a passion with British readers. Never had the 
literature of imagination and emotion more glory and 
more gain. Campbell sang a pleasant song, and had 



WORDSWORTH. 261 

thousands of charmed listeners ; Scott was a wizard ; 
Moore was a bard ; Byron was a demigod. Even 
Crabbe, harsh and harrowing as his stories were, at- 
tracted numbers to his dismal narratives. Pay came 
with praise. The income of Byron from his works was 
princely ; the revenue of Scott was imperial ; and any 
of the others whose share was the least ample still felt 
that the Muses were not ungenerous. But Words- 
worth walked alone in Cumberland without a cheer 
from the public or a bank check from the booksellers. 
Wordsworth bore his trials manfully. His meditative 
concentration kept him from distractions and desires 
that might have maddened a weaker man ; it sustained 
him strongly in himself; it preserved him from irri- 
tating comparisons ; it gave him knowledge of his 
special powers ; it made him master of them ; and, in 
revealing to him sources of confidence unconnected 
with popular caprice, it became a spirit of immovable 
self-reliance and self-respect. 

In this peculiarity of Wordsworth's genius, to which ' 
our attention in these reflections has been directed, we 
may discover the elements of some of Wordsworth's 
failings. One failing of his was an inordinate self- 
appreciation. He was so intent upon his own thoughts 
as to feel as if they constituted thought itself. His 
art was so much his life that he almost mistook Art for 
his personality, and spoke as if in him alone Art had 
worthy action. Nature in the same way seemed his, 
and he her only poet. He lived with her so constant- 
ly, so observingly, so lovingly, and so long, that Na- 
ture meant his consciousness of her. He was the me^ 
and she the not-me, of all poetical existence. His 



262 TLLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

intellectual habits tended to strengthen this impression. 
His own mind and that which could be made directly 
the object of it were the only factors of his genius. 
What other minds had done or were doing entered 
but little into his genius and but little modified it. 
His was a spirit that accepted nothing from others, 
and rejected mediators. He cogitated by himself 
and for himself ; and his method of composition, 
which was entirely mental, must have intensified his 
inward isolation. As he had never gone to secondary 
sources, and exceeded most men in faithful watchfulness 
of outward phenomena, it is not surprising that Nature 
should have enriched his mind with truth, freshness, 
originality, peculiarly in imagery and description. No 
one could be so much with Nature as Wordsworth 
was, even if he wanted the poetic temperament, and 
not observe and feel a great deal which escape the 
indolent and the insensible. But still Nature was not 
given over to Wordsworth alone. His imagery, in- 
deed, is true ; but so is that of others : it is also origi- 
nal ; but not less so is that of many who did not spend 
all the time w^hich he did in the outward world. One 
man may catch in a minute what another may miss 
through the twenty-four hours ; nay, that which one 
man does catch in a minute, another would miss for all 
eternity. Each man according to his being receives 
what he can enjoy and use — one by rapid flashes, 
another by slow ponderings ; and the soul kindled by 
a flash may burn with as fine a lustre as that in which 
the fire has long been smouldering. The fire that 
flamed in the soul of Wordsworth was sacred, but the 
heaven from which it was caught was not for him only ; 



WORDSWORTH. 263 

and many as well as lie had their lips touched with live 
coals from off God's altar. Wordsworth had a solemn 
idea of his office ; he regarded it as consecrated ; and he 
was right : but at times he alludes with such emphasis 
to his mission, and expresses such an awe of his own 
genius, that we cannot repress a smile : the smile is 
only prevented by reverence from becoming a laugh. 
The worship with which his heart is inspired is deep ; 
but he celebrates it as if he were a solitary priest. 
Poetry with Wordsworth meant his poetry ; and poetry 
was his life ; it was his past, his present, and his fu- 
ture ; it was his memory, his possession, and his hope. 
Wordsworth was, therefore, so filled with his poetry 
that he talked of it, he recited, he read it ; it was his 
authority, his argument, and his illustration. Another 
failing of his is so plainly implied in this that I need 
only mention it. He was insensible to the merits of 
other poets. For his contemporaries, at least, he showed 
no enthusiasm. Had the public the same feeling of 
these contemporaries as Wordsworth had of them, none 
of them would have been more popular than he was 
himself; and, if they were overvalued by the crowd, 
they were as much undervalued by the poet. 

The meditativeness of Wordsworth's genius ac- 
counts for the slow growth of his poetry into favor. 
Meditation is not in itself attractive. Few enter into 
it spontaneously. Meditation requires that men pierce 
into their interior selves ; and this is what men in gen- 
eral will do only upon compulsion. It is what they 
delight to be kept from doing ; it is what innumerable 
contrivances and inventions of pleasure are intended 
to keep them from doing ; and it is in this preventive 



264 ILLUSTEATIONS OF GENIUS. 

influence that such contrivances and inventions have 
the reason of their existence and their value. Seeing 
that all which makes man's nature great is spiritual, 
seeing that all which excites the spiritual in man is 
that which renders him conscious of his greatest life, 
we might suppose that none would be so especially 
honored as those who appeal to man through his high- 
est faculties. But so it is not. The pleasurable in- 
stincts are the most accessible ; and the nearer a man 
comes to these with a perfect talent, the quicker his 
reward and the larger his audience. The buffoon, in 
this respect, is before the wit, the .dancer before the 
sculptor, the singer before the poet, and the story teller 
before the thinker. The spiritual, in its inward im- 
port, is only known in another as it is known in one's 
self — by patient, thoughtful, even toilsome culture. 
But in the very process of this culture there is some hin- 
derance to true insight into another man's mind. One 
finds out ways afar from the beaten tracks, and he loves 
to pace them ; he has discovered hidden spots ; and, as 
his own discovery, they have charms for him. Truth 
he has sought with strong desire and lonely toil ; the 
fine connections by which the mind binds itself to la- 
tent sympathies of outward being he has formed in the 
recesses of his own memories ; the images and simili- 
tudes by which the soul gives bodies to its ideas in the 
shapes of Nature are moulded in his own consciousness 
by afiinities that are individual and independent. It is 
hard for such a person to break through his habits of 
isolation and enter fully into the life of another mind. 
In order to do so, he has in many things to train his 
faculties afresh. To readers like these Wordsworth 



WORDSWORTH. 265 

was a new lesson ; and even these would not readily 
begin to learn it. From the mass who had shunned 
all deliberative culture he could but slowly win peru- 
sal ; for the acquirement of reflective habits is not a 
discipline that many would think of beginning in the 
reading of a poet. Although some of the profoundest 
thought which the human mind has ever reached has 
expression in English poetry, yet the poetry with which 
the public was the most familiar in the time of Words- 
worth was for the greatest part instinctive and impul- 
sive. The poetry of Cowper was obvious and gentle ; 
that of Burns was intense and simple ; that of Scott 
was romantic ; that of Shelley was not tolerated. The 
poetry of Byron was fierce, fiery, and passionate ; and 
what Byron wrote that was reflective lost in popularity 
in the degree that it was reflective. Wordsworth's 
poetry was meditative ; and, as such, it was too remote 
for the instinctive tendency of the age and too calm 
for the impulsive. Merely as meditative, it had to 
overcome that apathy of mind which shrinks from the 
toils of thought ; and, as meditative with many pe- 
culiarities, it had to overcome those preconceptions 
which make singularity hard to be understood and 
those prejudices which render it repulsive. As it went 
down into the hidden things of life and nature, the 
superficial lost it ; and, as it often turned aside into 
strange by-ways, it sometimes escaped even the reflect- 
ing. The symbol always demanded study, and fre- 
quently the idea might be missed. An incident of 
individual experience was occasionally linked by sub- 
tleties of association to a general law ; the incident, 
with the poet's feeling of it, appeared in the verse. 



266 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

Many who read the verse did not apprehend the latent 
implication of the law : the incident then seemed silly 
and the feeling childish. The critics took advantage of 
this, and, either in mistake or malice, turned it to laugh- 
able account. But still minds grew into Wordsworth's 
poetry, and the poetry grew fruitfully into minds, un- 
til its seeds bore richly on the soil of genius and also 
bloomed in many a flower on the waysides of common 
life. 



ROBERT BURNS. 

In" a cottage on the banks of Doon, near the town 
of Ayr, in Scotland, in 1759, Robert Burns, one of the 
world's sweetest poets, first saw the light of life. The 
peasant child soon learned to know existence in toil 
and sorrow. Torn at an early age from study to labor, 
grief went hand in hand with glory through his re- 
maining years. We find him amidst the wild eccen- 
tricities of an irregular youth without any settled aim, 
as he himself declares, but with some stirrings of am- 
bition that were only as the blind gropings of Homer's 
Cyclops around the walls of his cave. With charac- 
teristic ardor, and with more zeal than wisdom, he 
mingled in the theological and political squabbles of the 
times, and, by the destructive boldness of his satire and 
the shafted power of his ridicule, created many ene- 
mies whom it was easier to provoke than to propitiate. 
Nor must we hold him blameless. In the prodigality 
of wit and the wildness of laughter, in the madness 
of merriment and the pride of genius, he treated opin- 
ions and persons with an unsparing levity which a more 
thoughtful experience would have taught him to regard 
with reverence or forbearance. That his genius went 
too frequently in company with his passions, and that 
the glory of the one was sometimes wrecked in the 

(267) 



268 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

delirium of the other, it is not allowed us to deny ; 
but these follies had their penalties ; and, if it were 
possible, they were better now forgotten in the ashes 
of his early grave. Burns was a man that sinned and 
one that suffered ; but he was not a man that sinned 
callously or that suffered meanly ; and it is not for the 
living to write in marble errors which the departed re- 
pented in tears. 

Incid^its of romance and anguish checker the open- 
ing of his poetic fame with sadness as well as sunshine. 
His Highland Mary, the love of his youth and the 
dream of his life, is wrenched from his heart by death. 
Then comes the melancholy episode of his attachment 
to Jean Armour, with its heavy retribution of wretch- 
edness. His name has begun to gather honor among 
his native hills ; the small provincial edition of his 
poems is hailed with proud enthusiasm ; but yet, with 
poverty and a bleeding spirit, he looks across the 
ocean to foreign exile. Suddenly his purpose is turned 
aside, and we behold him in Edinburgh among the ex- 
clusives and magnates of the land. There, as at the 
plough, we find him still the true and sturdy man. In 
the throng of Highland chieftains and border barons, 
in the full blaze of pride and beauty, he felt within 
him a humanity beyond the claim of titles : genius 
had given him a superscription more impressive than 
device of heraldry : the patent of nobility was written 
with fire in his heart, and the proud ones of earth 
recognized in him the aristocrat of heaven. The 
wealthy marvelled at the inspired peasant ; and, wher- 
ever the eloquent ploughman appeared, there were 
the nobles collected together. Dukes gave him their 



ROBEET BURNS. 269 

silken hands ; duchesses received him with sweetest 
smiles ; earls pledged him in the wine cup ; and, for 
the moment, the haughty and the highborn recognized 
the presence of a greatness superior to their own. But 
Burns was not a man to hold popularity long in circles 
such as these. He was too stoutly individual for the 
apathy of elegant mediocrity and he was too sternly 
independent for the sensibilit}^ of patronizing gran- 
dees ; he saw nothing to venerate in a title when it 
was but the nickname of a fool ; and he was undazzled 
by a star when it glittered on the breast of a ruffian or 
a dunce. But, though Burns escaped the danger of 
aristocratic delusion, he did not escape the danger of 
aristocratic feasts. These were the times of nightlong 
carousals and pottle-deep potations. Burns had nei- 
ther the firmness to resist such dissipation nor the con- 
stitution to endure it ; and he carried from it impaired 
health and impaired habits — an irritable discontent 
with his condition, and an instability of purpose fatal 
to a life of labor. Having placed a tomb over the 
neglected remains of poor Ferguson the poet, he re- 
tired to the country, shared his success with his brother 
Gilbert, met his mother steeped in tears of honest joy, 
married his Jean, and gave peace to a wounded spirit. 

From this era of light in his course — from this day, 
bright with fame and conscious virtue — - we trace him 
along a path devious and clouded. We follow him 
through the toil of a profitless farm to the struggles of a 
country ganger, and from these to a destitute death bed. 
In all his follies and his sufferings we behold him true 
to a manly nature, loyal to noble principles ; and, 



270 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

however seamed and deformed may have been the surface 
of his life, virtue remained unshaken in the centre of 
his soul. With a large family and only seventy pounds 
a year, he had an open hand for the poor and a hos- 
pitable roof for stranger and for friend ; and although 
he died owing no man any thing, yet he has been stig- 
matized as a prodigal and a spendthrift. He gave the 
world his immortal songs without money and without 
price ; and, with the generosity of benignant genius, 
he sympathized with every effort of the humble men 
around him for a nobler life, he ministered to their in- 
tellectual wants, and he aided their intellectual strug- 
gles. Accordingly we observe him, at a time when he 
was harassed with cares and overcome with toil on a 
barren farm, establishing a book club in his neighbor- 
hood, forming its rules and directing its operations. 
To estimate this in the true spirit, we must remember 
that it was more than sixty years ago, when as yet there 
had been no mechanics' institutions in the land and 
when lyceums were not, when cheap editions of stan- 
dard works had not arisen even on a printer's dream, 
and societies for the diffusion of useful knowledge were 
infolded, as the poets say, in the mighty womb of fu- 
turity. Dr. Currie, of Liverpool, a genial and elo- 
quent though patronizing biographer of Burns, in 
narrating this portion of his life, questions the utility 
of literary studies for the great masses of the people. 
Strange questioning this in a life of Burns, the cot- 
tage boy, whom the little knowledge of a rustic school 
awakened for eternity, raised from the clods of the val- 
ley to a place among the stars, a burning and imperish- 



ROBERT BURNS. 271 

able light, and who, but for that little knowledge, 
might have been as nameless clay as any that nurtures 
the grass of a village churchyard. 

The ideas of Currie have almost vanished with his 
times ; still even yet we occasionally hear some small- 
souled cynic, some snail-shell philosopher, who thinks 
himself of those sages with whom wisdom is to perish, 
sneer scornfully at popular knowledge. Popular knowl- 
edge, it is true, is not the wisdom of Solomon ; it has 
not the depth of Bacon or the sublimity of Newton ; 
still, so far as it goes, it is good, and, though the pedant 
may deride, the philanthropist will rejoice. And what, 
after all, is the ground of Mr. Pedant Wiseacre's pride ? 
Perhaps some learned investigation on the contraction 
of the Greek kai or the tail of the Greek gamma. 
Seriously, the critic and the scholar, when true to their 
noble office, deserve our admiration and our gratitude ; 
but those who grub merely for withered roots which 
never produce either fruits or flowers, and then, with 
insect vanity, give themselves airs of scorn, are them- 
selves saved from contempt only because all creatures 
have their uses. It is well for society that there should 
always be men of great and solid learning, and evil 
would be the day when slight acquirement should be 
a substitute for laborious thought ; but it is also desira- 
ble that these accumulated treasures should be widely 
and bountifully distributed. It is good to have deep 
fountains in our munitions of rocks ; but it is not 
good that these fountains should waste themselves in 
darkness ; it is not good that they should merely feed 
the gorgeous river and the mighty cataract ; they should 



272 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

also steal along in the sunny streamlet and give beau- 
ty to the secluded nook. Let there be rich men, and 
let them rejoice in their riches ; let there be great men, 
and let them exult in their greatness ; let there be men 
of strong intellect, but let them in their strength be 
merciful. It is not, however, the great, the noble, or the 
strong that are ever of destructive nature. It was the 
lean kine of Egypt that became the devourers, and yet 
were as skinny as before. So there are poor, lean, hun- 
gry animals of the critic species, unproductive as they 
are voracious, that are naturally the most unsparing 
and the most ferocious. 

When Burns went first to Edinburgh he was the 
rage, and homage to him became the cant of certain 
circles. But it is seldom that such homage survives 
a season. Poor Burns lived not long ; but he lived 
long enough to understand in bitterness the hol- 
lo wness of drawing-room applause. On a second visit 
to the Scottish metropolis, the enthusiasts of the first 
had disappeared. It is ridiculous enough now to us 
to think of even the high gentry in Edinburgh sup- 
posing they could do honor by their notice to such a 
man as Robert Burns; but ridicule deepens to con- 
tempt when we read of paltry provincials in Dumfries 
looking askant at their mighty townsman ; our indig- 
nation chokes our laughter at the record of treatment 
which small fashionables could ofier to a great poet. 
Mr. Lockhart gives an anecdote from a gentleman who 
told him " that he v>^as seldom more grieved than when, 
riding into Dumfries one fine summer's evening to 
attend a country ball, he saw Burns walking alone on 



KOBERT BURNS. 273 

the shady side of the principal street of the town, 
while the opposite side was gay with successive groups 
of gentlemen and ladies, all drawn together for the fes- 
tivities of the night, not one of whom appeared willing 
to recognize him.'' The horseman dismounted and 
joined Burns, w^ho, on his proposing to him to cross 
the street, said, "Nay, nay, my young friend, that's 
all over now," and quoted, after a pause, some verses 
of Lady Grizzle Baillie's pathetic ballad. 

Burns, amidst poverty and sorrow, when needful 
comforts had almost failed him in his sickness and his 
children nearly wanted bread, in the thirty-eighth year 
of his age, quitted a world that was not soon to look upon 
his like again. Burns, the gladdener of so many hearts, 
was at last outwrestled, and the mighty fell — - Burns, 
who had so deeply felt the rapture of genius and the 
calamities of life. 

The retribution with which the errors of Burns 
chastised him holds out impressive warning to all who 
are capable of drawing wisdom from example. If hap- 
piness could have found a resting-place in one of the 
most honest hearts that ever struck against a manly 
bosom ; if happiness had been with noble poetry, with 
an eloquence that never failed, with an imagination 
rich as the breast of Nature and bright as the stars in 
heaven ; if happiness could have been brought down 
from the sky by lofty and aspiring sentiments or fixed 
upon earth by generous and gentle affections, — then 
happiness would have been the lot of Burns. But 
Burns had contracted habits to which peace soon be- 
comes a stranger ; and he who has such habits, be he 
18 



274 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

bard or be he beggar, has already entered on the evil 
day ; lie may say, in all the bitterness of his soul, 
"Farewell the tranquil mind." It would seem as if 
Burns pictured by anticipation his own sad fate when 
he wrote the Bard's Epitaph. " Whom did the poet 
intend ? " asks Wordsworth, as quoted by Allan Cun- 
ningham. "Who but himself — himself anticipating 
the too probable termination of his own course ? Here 
is a sincere and solemn avowal ; a public declara- 
tion from his own will ; a confession at once devout, 
poetical, and human ; a history in the shape of a 
prophecy. What more was required of the biog- 
rapher than to have put his seal to the writing, tes- 
tifying that the foreboding had been realized and 
the record was authentic ? " — 



Is there a whim-inspired fool, 
Owre fast for thought or hot to rule, 
Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool, 

Let him draw near, 
And owre this grassy heap sing dool 

And drap a tear. 

Is there a bard of rustic song, 

Who, noteless, steals the crowds among 

That weekly this area throng, 

O, pass not by, 
But with a frater-feeling strong 

Here heave a sigh. 

Is there a man whose judgment clear 
Can others teach the course to steer. 
Yet runs himself life's mad career, 

Wild as the wave, 
Here pause, and through the starting tear 

Survey this grave. 



ROBERT BURNS. 275 

The poor inhabitant below 

Was quick to learn and wise to know, 

And keenly felt the friendly glow 

And softer flame ; 
But thoughtless follies laid him low 

And stained his name. 

Keader, attend ; whether thy soul 
Soars Fancy's flights beyond the pole, 
Or darkly grubs this earthly hole 

In low pursuit, 
Know, prudent, cautious, self-control 

Is Wisdom's root. 

Thus mucli I tliouglit I might venture on our poet's 
life. I shall now proceed to offer some remarks upon 
his genius. 

Burns was a true child of Nature ; thence his grow- 
ing power and thence the promise of his lasting fame. 
But, though the child of Nature, he was not the off- 
spring of mere rude or uncultivated nature. The Scot- 
tish peasantry were a class of men among whom such 
a mind as that of Burns could perhaps receive its most 
fitting development. Without the refinement which 
tends to repress spontaneous expression, they had suf- 
ficient of moral and intellectual education to give that 
expression variety and strength. Their country, their 
history, and their religion were all such as to train a se- 
rious and reflective imagination. Therefore it is that 
no peasantry have furnished so much to national litera- 
ture as the Scottish, and especially to national poetry. 
Within a period by no means extensive in their annals 
they have given to the world such writers as Ferguson, 
simple and full of music ; Allan Ramsay, in his Gen- 
tle Shepherd the very genius of pastoral poetry ; 



276 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

Tannahill, a lowly spirit of melody and pathos, a sweet 
voice of truth and tenderness ; Hogg, the glorious 
wizard of the mountains, coming down from his shep- 
herd's wilderness, his memory peopled with all olden 
legends and his fancy teeming with all fairy dreams. 
Burns, then, though mightiest, is but one of an hon- 
orable family ; though greatest and grandest among 
them, they are his kindred ; of some he is the heir, of 
others he is the progenitor. 

Burns is a poet true, as I have said, to Nature, and 
therefore true to Art. Burns is not mechanically arti- 
ficial, but he is patiently artistical. He had none of 
that indolent vanity which shrinks from careful prep- 
aration, which trusts all to sudden excitement and un- 
digested emotions. He looked, as every man of genius 
does, to the ideal ; he knew it was not to be compre- 
hended in a passing glance, or reached in a rapid 
bound, or imbodied in a single effort ; and he knew 
that, in the endeavor to unfold it, no execution could 
be too thoughtful and no labor too great. It is not 
the consciousness of power, but the conceit of vanity, 
which relies presumptuously upon momentary impulse, 
which mistakes the contortions of a delirious imbecili- 
ty for the movements of celestial agitation. The very 
creation of God, which required but the will and word 
of Omnipotence for instant and perfect existence, has 
been gradually constructed ; the earth on which we 
stand, so fair to look upon, so robed with beauty, so 
radiant with life and light, has been evolved from chaos 
through innumerable formations ; and even the thunder, 
so astounding in its crash, and the lightning, so sudden 
in its stroke, have long been generating in the womb 



EGBERT BURNS. 277 

of heaven. The man of genius, the man of creative 
power, is at once inspired and industrious ; at once a 
man of passion and a man of patience ; at once a con- 
structor and analyzer ; a man of enthusiasm, but also a 
man of wisdom. Genius is not intoxication, and it is 
even more than rapture; it is capacity subject to the 
law of truth and beauty — the intense action of the 
soul, exalted, harmonious, and illuminated. The flash 
of noble thought may come suddenly on the brain, the 
torrent of enkindled feeling may rush upon the heart ; 
but the spirit of order and of art must move over the 
face of this brilliant chaos ere it is shaped into that 
perfection which the world does not willingly let die. 
All mighty souls know this ; the rustic Burns knew it 
not less than the godlike Milton. 

The genius of Burns is now, by that instinctive ap- 
preciation which forms the supreme tribunal, placed in 
the highest order. Whence is this ? All he has writ- 
ten may be contained in a moderately sized volume. 
If quantity of production, therefore, were needed to ex- 
alt a writer, which it is not, Burns should remain in 
the region of mediocrity. Neither has he composed, 
as critics would seem to require, a work of elaborate 
and faultless excellence ; for he has not even attempted 
a tragedy or an epic poem. But critics cannot decide 
this point ; and that common heart which decides for all 
has decided for Burns. The depth and extent of his 
humanity have gained him his distinction ; and it is that 
humanity which gains distinction for any who outlive 
their age. It is this spirit of love and sympathy which 
evinces the kindred that all men recognize ; it is this 



278 ILLUSTRATION^ S OF GEXIUS. 

spirit that reaches the truth of Nature below all 
changes, custom, and convention — below all colors 
which climates paint upon the skin ; it is this which 
outlives all facts and fashions and abides forever in the 
immortal heart. Whoever has this spirit must live ; 
whoever has it not must die ; whoever has this spirit 
must live, defiled though he may be with many evils ; 
whoever has it not must die, no matter how excellent 
he may be besides : no matter what his brilliancy, his 
sagacity, his talent, the generations will outlast them 
all — will give them to as deep oblivion as they do the 
tongues of Babel. The world cherishes Boccaccio, not- 
withstanding the offences of his tales ; so it likewise 
preserves Chaucer. Rabelais and old Montaigne con- 
tinue in literature despite of their impurities ; and to 
think of Shakspeare dying, would be to conceive the 
extinction of letters or our race. All these men are 
deathless brothers ; and Burns is amongst them. His 
poetry is thoroughly human — a poetry which reproduces 
as we read it all the feelings of our wayward nature ; 
which shows how man was made to be merry and how 
he was made to mourn ; which enters the soul on its 
sunny or its gloomy side ; expands the heart with laugh- 
ter or chastens it with melancholy. 

In knowledge of man Burns strikes us with wonder 
unspeakable, when we consider the narrow circle in 
which he lived and the early age at which he died. A 
single song is like a compressed drama ; and within the 
circle of these songs we have impulses from every stage 
of life, from the perturbations of youth to the chill of 
age. To every shade of sentiment and affection, to 



ROBERT BURNS. 279 

every change and turn of inward experience, to every 
oddity and comicality of feeling he has given a voice 
of musical and energetic utterance. 

Man, and man directly, — man in the play of all his 
passions, — is, with Burns, the great object of interest. 
The descriptive and the picturesque for their own sake 
have, therefore, no place in his writings. A picture 
with him is never more than the drapery of a passion. 
The chivalric past has none of his veneration ; and the 
past, in any form, only kindles him when he associates 
it with the movements of humanity or the struggles of 
liberty. The conflicts of feudalism, the rivalry of dy- 
nasties, the gorgeous falsehoods of departed ages had 
no enchantment to w^arm his fancy or to rule his pen. 
In this respect the writings of Scott and those of Burns 
are as opposite as are their characters. The brilliancy 
of descriptive narrative glows over the poems of Scott ; 
the strong life of passion throbs in those of Burns. 
Even in the record of a tour this contrast is observa- 
ble. Scott has the eye of an antiquarian and a map- 
maker united; Burns glances along as if space were 
a tiresome obstruction to his fiery nature. Scott sur- 
veys every baronial castle and notes all its chronicles ; 
Burns raves with inspired fury on the field where the 
invader was struck down, where " tyrants fell in every 
blow.'' Scott imagined that genius owed homage to 
rank ; Burns gave the obligation another version, and 
conceived that rank should do reverence to genius. 
Peasant born, he was too proud in his humanity to 
covet titles : almost morbidly jealous of individual in- 
dependence, hereditary aristocracy was not to him 



280 ILLUSTKATIO]N^S OF GENIUS. 

poetically impressive ; its outward glare provoked his 
scorn and its deeper abuses sickened his imagination. 

Two most human qualities in all poets are preemi- 
nent in Burns — I mean pathos and humor. 

His pathos is profound, but kindly. No writer is 
less gloomy than Burns ; and yet none for the extent 
of his compositions has more pathos. No writer with- 
in the same compass has grander thoughts or deeper 
beauty ; and, by some magic of the heart, grand 
thoughts and deep beauty are always allied to melan- 
choly. The canopy of the blue heavens, when nof a 
cloud swims in its brightness, makes our rapture sad ; 
so it does when the stars stud it with ten thousand 
lights : the mountain's majesty and the ocean's vast- 
ness subdue our souls to thought ; and in this world of 
ours thought has ever something of the hue of grief. 
It would seem as if a mysterious connection existed 
between great objects and pensive feelings, between 
lofty sentiments and deep regrets — a kind of struggle 
in our higher nature against the limits of its condition : 
a disappointment at the long interval that separates 
our aspirations from the ideal tinges with sorrow all 
our sensations of the beautiful. Pathos such as this 
imbues all the graver poetry of Burns. Scarcely is 
there a woe which wrings the bosom between the cra- 
dle and the grave which has not an expression in the 
solemn music of his verse, from the gentlest whisper 
of feeling to the frenzies of every pain and the agonies 
of every passion. But, though deep, his melancholy is 
not morbid. It is the melancholy of great capacities 
and of real suffering — of error reacting on itself a just 



EGBERT BURNS. 281 

infliction or glorious desires yearning for their congen- 
ial objects. The Muse of Burns was a rustic maiden — 
a maiden healthful and hardy. Fits of vapors she 
might occasionally have ; but the heather of her native 
mountains soon restored the elasticity of her step, 
and the breeze of her pleasant valleys quickly recalled 
the bloom to her cheek and the lustre to her eye. At 
times she sought the solitudes ; but she returned ere 
long to human homes and sang her wild and simple 
songs to the friendly circle. She loved, it is true, to 
meditate under the green shadow of the forest and to 
look up in raptured spirit to the lurid and darkened 
heavens ; but she loved no less the blessed sunshine 
on the harvest hill and the cottage smoke that floated 
in the evening sky. If occasionally shS wept amidst 
the graves of her heroes, she came from the places of 
the dead more boldly to proclaim liberty in the places 
of the living. 

This pathos is neither maudlin nor misanthropic. It 
does not make the head giddy with paradox nor whirl 
the heart upon a wild and chaotic tempest of doubt 
and selfishness ; it does not dissect out the evils of 
human nature and gloat over them with a diseased 
voluptuousness ; it does not lead you to sit at the feast 
of despair with the spectres and skeletons around you 
of unsocial horrors. It is no mawkish pretence of sen- 
timent. Burns is true to what he feels ; and, right or 
wrong, he speaks it as it is. He maintains this course 
in his good and his evil. It saved him from grovelling 
and bombast ; it saved him from intellectual cant and 
from literary quackery. No language is so eloquent as 



282 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

honest language. Truth goes direct to its purpose, 
while affectation is crawling around its petty circum- 
locutions ; and, as the straight line is the shortest, the 
most sincere words are the most resistless. As the 
poet had honesty in himself, he had faith in others. 
His appeal was weakened by no scepticism in the ca- 
pacity of humble men to appreciate the noble and the 
beautiful. He spoke to them as beings whose hearts 
were of the same substance as his own ; he spoke con- 
fident of the result, and he was not disappointed. The 
first auditors of his verses were the obscure dwellers 
among Scottish hills and hamlets ; and to his words he 
received as true a response as poetic enthusiasm could 
have desired. The sons and daughters of toil proved 
to him that he had not trusted them in vain. He gave 
them his faith ; and they paid back the trust with a 
priceless love. 

I have said that the pathos of Burns is not morbid ; 
and I have said truly. In its lowest depths it is not 
dark, in the uttermost sadness it is not despairing. He 
grieves, but he never whines ; and when he utters forth 
tones the most plaintive, they are yet so vigorous and 
so full that by the strong sound of them you feel that 
they come out from the stalwort struggle of a manly 
bosom. He has pathos, too, of every variety. He 
has the pathos of sympathy ; and this sympathy is 
often so intense as to amount to a passionate indig- 
nation — as thus, in the poem Man was made to 
Mourn : — 

Many and sharp the numerous ills 

Inwoven Tvith our frame ; 
More pointed still we make ourselves — 

Regret, remorse, and shame. 



ROJBEllT BURNS. 283 

And Man, whose Heaven -created face 

The smiles of love adorn, — 
Man's inhumanity to man 

Makes countless thousands mourn, 

This is a large and noble eloquence condensed into 
a soul-fraught poetry ; yet is it but one out of the 
many stanzas of which the whole consists of equal 
power. So likewise he has the pathos of pity, of 
tenderness, in their finest modulations. The chords 
of his own heart were most delicately attuned to " the 
still, sad music of humanity ; " and the breathings of 
its sorrow were of that genuine humanity to which 
other hearts cannot but respond. How much of such 
pitiful gentleness have we constantly in his poetry, of- 
ten coming near to gusts of anger, like the song of a 
mourner in a stormy midnight or the moan of the 
tempest after its rush ! But sometimes we have 
melancholy plaints, without one tone of harshness, 
in such exquisite verses as those on The Mouse and 
the Mountain Daisy, in Poor Mailie's Elegy and the 
Farmer's Address to the Old Mare on New Year's Day. 
Illustrations of this point are in all his writings, prose 
as well as poetry ; but I will only mention one other — 
his Lines on a Wounded Hare. Burns has, in an emi- 
nent degree, the pathos which springs from contempla- 
tion of our mortal life, and not less that which comes 
from these solemn questionings of the spirit to which ex- 
perience and the past give only accusing answers. A 
man of genius may do wrong ; he may lose himself in 
the mazes of the passions ; he may forget himself in the 
excitement and turbulence of the senses ; but all this 
is at a deadlier cost than it is to any other man. Let 



284 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

no puny copyist of genius only in its errors and its 
wanderings doubly deceive himself, first, by suppos- 
ing that he has genius, and then, more fatally, de- 
ceive himself by inferring that genius has impunity. 
True it is that genius, like charity, covereth a multi- 
tude of sins, and for the delight and the beauty 
vi^hich a great soul showers upon the world the world 
does abundantly forgive. But genius does not forgive 
itself. A strong moral sensibility, though, it may be, 
not strong moral principle, is mostly a concomitant, if 
not an essential element, in the nature of a man of 
genius ; and, therefore, when such a man does violence 
to his higher sentiments his very genius becomes his 
punishment. The grandeur of his ideal ; the innate 
love that he must have to the good and to the beautiful ; 
the extent of his moral associations ; the tenacity of his 
moral memories ; the vitality of his imagination calling 
back again and back again the thoughts which had 
only disappeared, but were not dead, — all conspire to 
chastise him, and to chastise him by the faculties which 
enchant and move the world. The depth and the com- 
pass of his sympathies afflict him ; and as the fountains 
of thought and feeling are full within him, so much 
the greater are the agitations that shake him. These 
remarks concern mainly those men of genius whose na- 
ture is that of a comprehensive humanity. Men there 
have been, and are, that might be adduced to contra- 
dict the position I have ventured here to take ; for they 
were capable of much that was unworthy, and yet they 
did not suffer or repent. Some were deniers and some 
were sensualists ; the deniers had fine art, and the sen- 
sualists had fine sentiments, and all were men of 



HOBERT BURNS. 285 

genius. I have no reply to make, except that in such 
men their genius, as their humanity, was of partial 
though intense development, and that such was a class 
to which Burns did not belong. He was neither a de- 
nier nor a sentimentalist. He was a man, take him for 
all in all ; and he was a poet in the whole compass of 
the man. The man spoke through the poet, not in 
gladness only, but also in every note of sorrow and 
compunction. What sombre power in his Ode to 
Despondency ! — 

Oppressed with, grief, oppressed with care, — 
A burden more than I can bear, — 

I sit me down and sigh : 
life, thou art a galling load, 
A long, a rough, a weary road 

To wretches such as I. 

Dim, backward, as I cast my view, 

What sick'ning scenes appear ! 
What sorrows yet may pierce me through, 

Too justly, I may fear ! 
Still caring, despairing, 

Must be my bitter doom ; 
My woes here shall close ne'er 

But with the closing tomb. 

See this again in the affection with which he loved 
the sombre phases of external Nature and the force 
with which he painted them. Thus he meditates in 
winter : — 

The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast, 

The joyless winter day 
Let others fear, to me more dear 

Than all the pride of May. 



286 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

The tempest's howl, it soothes my soul ; 

My griefs it seems to join ; 
The leafless trees my fancy please ; 
Their fate resembles mine. 

Then, passing from this low-breathing despondency, 
we have lyric tragedy shouting down despair in a kind 
of reckless ecstasy. Bold and brave is this Song of 
Death : — 

Farewell, thou fair day, thou green earth, and ye skies, 

Now gay with the bright setting sun ; 
Farewell, loves and friendships, ye dear tender ties, 

Our race of existence is run. 
Thou grim king of terrors, thou life's gloomy foe. 

Go frighten the coward and slave ; 
Go teach them to tremble, fell tyrant ; but know, 

No terrors hast thou to the brave. 

In the pathos of love Burns has no superior. What 
poet in ancient or modern times, short of Shakspeare, 
has sung with more varied inspiration than Burns 
the agitations with which love convulses the heart of 
man and breaks the heart of woman ? In a few com- 
pressed but simple-meaning lines he reveals the pas- 
sion in all its regrets and agony. And here, also, 
we can see the force, the simplicity, the vehement 
sincerity of his poetry ; and we can see exactly 
the same characteristics in his life. Allan Cun- 
ningham, in his biography of Burns, tells a very af- 
fecting anecdote which I may here fairly adduce in 
illustration. Jean Armour was lying ill in the house 
of her parents. Burns had arranged to quit the coun- 
try forever, but wanted once, before he left, to see his 



ROBERT BURNS. 287 

Jean. Burns attempted to go into the house ; but her 
father stood in the door to exclude him. Burns, mad- 
dened by his grief, pushed the old man aside, rushed 
up to his daughter's chamber, and, throwing himself 
across the bed, wept as if his heart would burst. And 
with regard to his verses to Mary in Heaven, if any 
thing could be more pathetic than the verses them- 
selves, it was the circumstances in which he composed 
them. It is now familiar to all who read the least of 
literary history that this sublimely pathetic ode was 
composed on the anniversary of the maiden's death, 
while the poet lay abroad in the field during a bright 
harvest night recalling the images of past affections ; 
and out from this dream of the wakeful and troubled 
heart came that dirge of music which the noblest hu- 
manity inspired and which the rudest humanity must 
love. It is so familiar to every one that I will not 
dare to profane it by repetition. But here are a few 
lines of a song lyrical with all the melody of sad- 
ness : — 

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever ! 
Ae farewell — alas ! forever ! 
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee ; 
Wailing sighs and groans I'll wage thee. 
Who shall say that Fortune grieves him 
While the star of hope she leaves him ? 
Me, nae cheerful twinkle lights me ; 
Dark despair around benights me. 

* * * * 

Had we never loved sae kindly, 
Had we never loved blindly. 
Never met, or never parted. 
We had ne'er been broken hearted. 

The humor of Burns, too, is full of humanity. It 



288 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

is affluent with all tlie rich and laughing juices of the 
heart, and has only just so much of acid as adds pun- 
gency to sweetness. Burns has the humor most char- 
acteristic of his country ; but beyond that he has a 
humor belonging to himself — a humor which, while 
it distinguishes the individual, endears him to his kind. 
In common with his countrymen, he has the cautious 
innuendo, the sly allusion, the insinuated sarcasm, the 
shrewd but mocking suggestion, the implied irony, 
the dextrously concealed and quiet fun, the sober joke; 
but he goes beyond all this, and has a humor which 
can make men of every nation shake their sides — a 
humor that often unites the broadness of Rabelais with 
the sentiment of Sterne. Such a humor demands not 
only extraordinary wealth of imagination, but also ex- 
traordinary force of intellect — a very uncommon fancy 
and a very strong common sense. And it was the 
union of these in Burns which so well enabled him to 
be at once comic and satirical — which enabled him so 
happily to combine the sarcastic and the ludicrous ; 
and he does this in such a way that, while his victims 
writhe before us, we discern no malignity in their tor- 
turer. But it is in jocund, queer, joyous humor, hu- 
mor reckless in its gladness, that Burns the most excels. 
In this species of humor he has scarcely an equal. 
Few of the greatest masters in humor come near him; 
and in what we may call the comic lyric he stands al- 
most alone. The humor that makes richest melody in 
the heart ; that sings for every joy ; that, by every note 
in which laughter can sing out its ecstasy, swells the 
choruses of mirth and merriment ; the humor that is 
a jubilee in the bosom, that gives widest liberty to 



ROBERT BURNS. 289 

fancy, a saturnalia in which no thought of care or 
labor dares intrude, a carnival in which all kindly 
oddities of conception play their parts ; a humor that 
combines imagination and feeling into numberless 
bright varieties to exhilarate our life, — of this hu- 
mor. Burns, in his laughing moods, is the potent wiz- 
ard ; of this enlivening magic his gayer songs are the 
resistless spells. 

This humor, too, is generously and jovially human; 
and, although Burns' s ridicule is often coarse, it is rare- 
ly cruel. He strikes ; but it is with the arm of a man, 
and not with the blasting of a fiend. Gall he does 
sometimes mingle with the cup of satire, but never the 
deadly nightshade : the barb he sharpens keenly ; but 
he does not steep it in poison. He painted, it is true, 
with a breadth and richness of coloring that made men 
hold their sides and set the table in a roar, the fooleries 
and absurdities of individuals, the pretensions of 
sects and the bitterness of factions, the vanities of 
professions, the motley trivialities of presumptuous 
and stolid nonsense ; but in the very storm of his sar- 
casm he spares our common nature. There is.> a ridi- 
cule which properly may be called diabolical ; which 
desecrates every thing endeared and noble ; which 
laughs not in festivity of spirit, but in bitterness of 
heart ; which, like the witches in Macbeth around the 
midnight caldron, shrieks in the irony of satanic 
mirth over the degradation of humanity. This temper 
is realized in the writings of Swift and affected in 
those of Byron ; but we discover no trace of it in the 
compositions of Burns. Burns would give even to 
Satan himself the grace of repentance and a chance of 
19 



290 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

heaven. Burns, like Byron, can pass rapidly from the 
grave to the grotesque, but altogether in a different 
spirit. In the one it is the prodigality of fun ; in the 
other it is the wilfulness of scorn. In the one it is 
sport ; in the other it is derision. The one as friend to 
friend mocks humanity pleasantly ; the other makes it 
a Sancho Panza, tosses it in a blanket, and laughs the 
louder the more it is humiliated. 

Attributing humor to Burns, I do not estimate humor 
as the slight matter which many seem to think it. If 
we trust some persons, we should conceive that length 
of face was length of wisdom, gravity of look the veil 
of oracles, thickness of skull the safeguard of knowl- 
edge, and rigidity of muscle the solemn surface of an 
unfathomable philosophy. But humor in its higher 
form is the quality not only of a liberal, but of a cul- 
tivated spirit. It requires that the mental powers be 
vigorous as well as genial. It requires imagination 
and intellect, as well as a heart in the right place 
and the juices of the body in a good condition. Hu- 
mor, as well as pathos, is the result of sympathy — of 
sympathy that embraces man in the most brotherly cor- 
diality, weeps with those who weep, and rejoices with 
those who do rejoice. This is the humor of Shak- 
speare ; it is the humor of Hogarth ; it is the humor 
of Burns. And many a noble use has this honest 
faculty. Often is it more effective than sermons to make 
life lambent, to clear the sky that was becoming too 
heavy around us, to warm social intercourse, to dissi- 
pate evil passions, and, by its pleasant mockeries, to 
shame us out of nonsensical miseries. 

Time would now fail me to refer to the poetry of 



ROBERT BURNS. 291 

Burns with any special detail ; but, for pages so well 
known, a few brief reminiscences will be sufficient. 
How full of beauty is The Vision — the poem in which, 
with a self-conscious greatness almost Miltonic, he cele- 
brates his own consecration to the glory of his country ! 
We read it in delight, in wonder, and with sorrow, and 
with joy ; we verily admit that " the light which led 
astray was light from heaven." With what solemn 
pleasure we recall the Cotter's Saturday Night! No 
other poem in the language shows how much the eye 
of a poet can see, how much the heart of a poet can 
feel, where another heart is dull and another eye is 
blind. To the prosaic nothing familiar is exciting ; but 
to the inspired all existence is full of glory. Here, 
upon a cottage floor, we have placed before us the most 
pure and the most noble virtues, the piety that looks 
to heaven, the patriotism that dignifies earth ; here 
we have the father returned from his toil, with his " wee 
things" circling his knees, his clean hearthstone, his 
*' thrifty wifie's " smile, his soul made glad with Sab- 
bath hopes and with holy thoughts ; here are brothers 
and sisters gathered from the workday world around 
the parents that shielded and that blessed their infan- 
cy ; here are the pleasant face and the heart's own 
smile ; here the homely feast, with a joy which luxury 
refuses and a gratitude which no luxury inspires ; here 
is first love, with maiden blushes, shames, and fears ; 
here are all the sublimities of the affections, all in the 
shades of unnoticed life. How noble is that father and 
that peasant priest as he bares his " haffit locks," and 
" ' Let us worship God,' he says, with solemn air " ! — 



292 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

Then, kneeling down, to heaven's eternal King 

The saint, the father, and the husband prays : 
Hope " springs exulting on triumphant wing " 

That thus they all shall meet in future days ; 

There ever bask in uncreated rays. 
No more to sigh or shed the bitter tear ; 

Together hymning their Creator's predse 
In such society, yet still more dear ; 
"While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere. 

Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride, 

In all the pomp of method and of art, 
^Vhen men display to congregations wide 

Devotion's every grace except the heart ! 

The Power, incensed, the pageant will desert, 
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole ; 

But haply in some cottage, far apart, 
May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul, 
And in his book of life the inmates poor enroll. 

And how exalted that love of country which utters 
this fine supplication ! — 

Scotia, my dear, my native soil, — 

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent, — 
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil 

Be blessed with health, and peace, and sweet content ! 

And O, may Heaven their simple lives prevent 
From Luxury's contagion weak and vile ! 

Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent, 
A virtuous populace will rise the while. 
And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle. 

The spirit of hilarity has never been so admirably 
blended with the gloomy and the tender as in the tale 
of Tarn O'Shanter. Heroic and immortal Tam will 
stand his ground while the name of witch or warlock 
has a place in language. This marvellous mixture of 



ROBERT BURNS. 293 

fun and fancy, this chronicle of midnight revelry, 
this record of wit and waggery, of good fellowship and 
ghosts, has now a lodgment in every mind that relishes 
drollery and genius. Here we have the sublime with 
the ludicrous ; images most delicate with images most 
homely ; subtle analogies with grotesque incongruities ; 
touches of sorrow with strokes of glee ; all coming in 
such rapid succession, that, while the broad grin is on 
the lip, the tear is starting to the eye. The Jolly Beg- 
gars gives us the very saturnalia of low life ; jovial 
poverty frolics away in the full abandonment of ex- 
travagance, dashed over, however, here and there with 
those shadings of regret which obtrude the sadness of 
life when men try to forget it most. The Halloween 
pictures the poor man's carnival, such as it used to be 
in Scotland, with all its superstitions and its sports. 
The Twa Dogs is a genial exposition of the poor man's 
philosophy. The dog of wealth, laying aside his mas- 
ter's pride in his master's absence, meets the peasant 
dog with very kindly courtesy ; and both, sitting tran- 
quilly on their haunches, with nose to nose, and most 
sagacious phizes, discuss the comparative merits of 
riches and poverty, pity the folly of their two-legged 
fellow-creatures, congratulate each other on their canine 
superiority, and bless their stars for being dogs instead 
of men. Caesar, the dog of high life, with an air of 
peculiar respectability and most complacent compassion, 
wonders how poor folks can live at all. Luath, his 
humble friend, knows that poor folks not only live, but 
live with very many pleasures ; and this Luath was a 
dog of sympathy : he shared the cottage sorrow ; he 
shared also the cottage joy ; he rattled away among the 



294 ILLUSTllATIONS OP GENIUS. 

dancers ; wagged his tail in the highest glee of his 
honest heart, and gave his chorus to the merry sound. 
"When adversity was on the hearth his face grew long ; 
when better times returned it was broad again. 

" My heart hae been sae fain to see them 
That I for joy hae barkit wi' them." 

The whole of this poem is fraught with the noblest 
and the most endearing humanity — a humanity most 
varied and most musical in its tones, running quick- 
ly along all the chords of sadness and of merriment, 
throwing forth a harmony of charity and heart-breath- 
ing kindness in which grave sounds and gay mingle 
together, but not one vibration ungenial or discordant. 
That Burns should give to a dog sentiments thus char- 
acteristic of a sweet and generous temper, corresponds 
entirely to the feelings with which he regarded that 
animal, as illustrated in a passage which I have lately 
taken from a newspaper. 

The following original anecdote of Burns is in a 
work entitled the Philosophy of the Seasons, by Rev. 
Henry Duncan : — 

" I well remember with what delight I listened to an 
interesting conversation which, while yet a schoolboy, 
I enjoyed an opportunity of hearing in my father's 
manse between the poet Burns and another poet, my 
near relation, the amiable Blacklock. The subject was 
the fidelity of the dog. Burns took up the question 
with all the ardor and kindly feeling with which the 
conversation of that extraordinary man was so remarka- 
bly imbued. It was a subject well suited to call forth 
his powers, and, when handled by such a man, not less 



ROBERT BURNS. 295 

suited to interest the youthful fancy. The anecdotes 
by which it was illustrated have long escaped my mem- 
ory ; but there was one sentiment expressed by Burns 
with his characteristic enthusiasm, which, as it threw 
a light into my mind, I shall never forget. ' Man,' 
said he, ' is the god of the dog. He knows no other ; 
he can understand no other ; and see how he worships 
him ! With what reverence he couches at his feet ! 
with what love he fawns upon him ! with what depend- 
ence he looks up to him ! and with what cheerful alac- 
rity he obeys him ! His whole soul is wrapped up in 
his god, and the powers and faculties of his nature 
are devoted to his service ; and these powers and facul- 
ties are exalted by the intercourse. It ought just to 
be so with the Christian ; but the dogs put the 
Christians to shame.'" 

It is thus that the spirit of human love, the truest 
element of poetic beauty, can ennoble and consecrate 
all it touches ; it is thus that Burns elevates the most 
lowly objects — the farmer's mare, proud in her age and 
services ; the little cowering mouse, houseless and 
frightened ; the dying ewe ; the wounded hare ; the 
simple daisy ; rustic sweethearts and rustic beggars, — 
all were endeared to his generous imagination ; and 
over them, while words have meaning, there will be 
laughing eyes and serious faces. 

Burns was great in many forms of poetry ; but in 
lyric poetry he was greatest of all. The songs of 
Burns, in every point of view, are truly wonderful com- 
positions. We are at a loss which most to admire — 
their number and variety, or their individual perfection. 
The lyre of Burns incessantly changes its tone ; and in 



296 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

every change it throws forth a flood of new inspiration. 
Great indeed is the task to give poetic and condensed 
expression to those thousand impulses that ever heave 
within us and are evanescent as the ocean wave ; to 
furnish fitting words for the ideal and fervid longings 
which millions feel, but cannot utter for themselves ; 
to imbody in lasting form innumerable and undefined 
desires ; to touch chord after chord of memory and 
emotion and to awaken the divine music that slumbers 
in the soul ; in a word, to give melody and speech to 
the complicated heart of man. Great is the task ; but 
Burns has accomplished it. 

Burns was great in sadness and great in humor ; 
human in his melancholy, most loving in his laughter. 
When we hear the pleasant peal of his hearty mirth 
our bosoms dilate until we could embrace our species 
in affection. When, changing his tone, we feel the 
breath of his indignation or listen to his cry against op- 
pression, our pulse beats quicker and our blood flows 
faster. Bard he was of the b^ave and fervent soul, 
destined to move humanity as long as language shall 
endure ; as long as the love of liberty, of independence, 
of fearless honesty, or patriotic courage shall have a 
refuge in our world. 

Burns is a nobleman of Nature, a man for the toils- 
men of earth to look upon and hope. In humble, rus- 
tic life, under the thatched roof which gave the peas- 
ant his shelter, in the field where the heir of labor in 
the sweat of his brow fulfilled the original destiny of 
man, Burns fed inspired thoughts and laid the founda- 
tion of a deathless fame. True, his life was short in 
years ; but how passing long was it in emotions, in 



ROBERT BURNS. 297 

capacious and crowded fancies ! His spirit was goaded, 
no doubt, with, the vulgar cares of poverty and the 
worse results of passion ; but it was glorified also with 
conscious genius. He could retreat from the vexations 
of the world to the sanctuary of his enriched imagina- 
tion ; and there, amidst all the evils of his outward 
condition, he could find in poetry its own exceeding 
great reward. Through all the sorrows that overspread 
his short but rapid course, amidst all the clouds that 
hung heavily over his path, glimpses of joy were ever and 
anon bursting on his enraptured eye which it is given 
only to the favored ones to behold. And who would 
not, if he could, have a soul so adorned with the beau- 
tiful, rather than without it be overburdened with the 
load of external fortune ? Had Burns been merely a 
man of title, he had been forgotten as all titled dust 
since the days of Nimrod, as unknown as the dukes 
of Edom ; a pompous funeral and a lying epitaph would 
have given him to oblivion. As it is, the recollection 
of him is garnered in the choicest corners of the heart, 
and his name is linked forever to the music of sweetest 
sounds. 

I am now at the close of my task. I have gone 
through it lovingly and with reverence ; sensible along 
the way of much goodness in my subject, and not for- 
getful either of some evil also. That many faults are 
in the compositions of Burns I apprehend most clearly, 
and that sad irregularities were in his life it requires 
small trial of candor to confess ; but to have spread 
them out in ostentatious commentary would have 
served no purpose of this essay and gratified no de- 
sire of the reader. I am not blind to those errors ; I 



298 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

propose no excuse ; I deprecate no just condemnation; 
and I have been forbearing from no moral indifference, 
no moral insensibility ; but, dealing with the memory 
of genius, I reflected that the man was before his God 
and the poet had met the sentence of the world. For 
wisdom or for warning, the events of his life are suffi- 
ciently familiar ; he that runs may read ; their moral 
meaning let him read and ponder ; let him learn, and 
let him be better. But I have no sympathy with that 
vampire -like spirit which- disintombs the faults of the 
illustrious dead to feed the nauseous appetites of itself 
or others. I tread upon the grave with caution and 
compassion ; and while I do not regard genius as re- 
pealing the law of virtue, neither do I regard it as 
beyond the law of mercy. We need, all of us, great 
tenderness from those who surround us ; we need 
much, too, from those who survive us. If we require 
charity from men, who give them nothing, let us grant 
it to those who have enriched us and enriched the 
ages. In the noble and eloquent verses of Halleck, 
we, too, say of Burns, — 

His is the language of the heart, 
^^ In which the answering heart would speak ; 

Thought, word, that bid the warm tear start 

Or the smile light the cheek. 
And his the music to whose tone 

The common pulse of man keeps time 
In cot or castle*s mirth or moan, 

In cold or sunny clime. 

Praise to the bard ! His words are driven. 
Like flower seed by the far wind sown, 

Where'er beneath the sky of heaven 
The birds of fame have flown. 



BOBERT BUBNS. 299 

Praise to the man ! A nation stood 

Beside his coffin with wet eyes, — 
Her brave, her beautiful, her good, — 

As when a loved one dies. 
And still, as on his funeral day. 

Men stand his cold earth couch around 
"With the mute homage that we pay 

To consecrated ground. 
And consecrated ground it is — 

The last, the hallowed home of one 
Who lives upon all memories, 

Though with the buried gone. 
Such graves as his are pilgrim shrines. 

Shrines to no creed or sect confined — 
The Delphian vales, the Palestines, 

The Meccas of the mind. 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

To a writer such as De Quincey, so wide in the range 
of his power, so multifarious in his topics, so versatile 
in his genius, so manifold in his scholarly acquisitions 
and accomplishments, we cannot do full justice within 
the limits of a single essay. All we propose, there- 
fore, is to mark some of his peculiarities. 

The idea of De Quincey which the mind calls up 
first and most vividly is that of a dreamer — a great 
dreamer — a dreamer entirely singular, alone amidst 
all secular literature. Like a spirit at the entrance of 
an enchanted region, the opium vision keeps the pas- 
sage to that magnificent and ideal kingdom which De 
Quincey has created for us in the world of mind ; it 
arrests us at the portal ; we converse with it in a 
strange delight ; and it puts a spell upon us which 
cannot be shaken ofi*, countercharm as wisely as we 
may. We must look at and speak with it until our 
spirits learn to be tranquil. It is thus that the earliest 
production of De Quincey affects us ; and it is through 
that earliest production we come in the beginning to 
know him. This is first in the order of reading; 
it is first also in the order of impression ; though 
it is not according to the order of worth. In every 
generation, persons vnW enter into acquaintance with 

(300) 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 301 

De Quincey through The Confessions. Persons are 
likely to begin to know him by that in which he 
began to write ; and herein, for advantage or for in- 
jury, a difference lies between him and some others 
of the great in literature. Others as well as he be- 
gan with what was morbid and impassioned. Indeed, 
in minds of heat and power, this is natural. It is 
natural that the embryo of a giant imagination yet 
enveloped in sense and passion should make manifest 
its existence and its coming birth in spasms and in 
qualms. A sickness of this kind groans in the 
Werter of Goethe, in The Robbers of Schiller, and 
in the Queen Mab of Shelley ; but we seldom begin to 
read Goethe, Schiller, or Shelley in these works ; and 
these are not the works which come potently to our 
thoughts associated with the names of their authors. 
And so it would be also with the name of De Quincey 
if The Confessions were nothing more than morbid 
and impassioned ; but, besides the pathetic incidents 
of the story and the wild singularity of the experi- 
ence, there were in them a wealth of learning, a ma- 
turity of art, and a completeness of execution which 
at once established them as not alone a series of ex- 
citing revelations, but as a finished classic in the letters 
of the world. 

Dreaming, in itself, constitutes no distinction for De 
Quincey- or for any one. We all dream, and dream, 
too, with our eyes open. The dullest of us dream as 
well as the brightest, and the most wretched as well 
as the most happy. Half of time is day and half is 
night ; but more than half our conscious being is made 
up of dreams ; and of these, the dreams of the day 



302 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

outnumber the dreams of tlie niglit. " We are (all of 
us) such stuff as dreams are made of; and our little life 
is rounded with a sleep." Shakspeare, who thus wrote, 
paints the world as a stage ; and out of the many parts 
which man plays on it he has traced us one through its 
seven ages. He might have shown us, had it so pleased 
him, that every age through all the seven has its dreams, 
and that these dreams change with the transitions in the 
sleep of life by which they are surrounded. Dreams 
begin with consciousness, and they continue to the end ; 
they change, indeed, but they do not cease. Even in- 
fancy, no doubt, has its own illusions; and "the 
whining schoolboy, creeping like snail unwillingly to 
school," dreams much as he lingers by the way. Then 
to the lover come the dreams of passion and of youth. 
The soldier dreams of cannon and of glory ; the al- 
derman of civic honors and of city feasts. Age and 
second childhood also have their dreams ; and, though 
age may be a miser and only dream of money, the sec- 
ond childhood brings back the freshness of the first, 
and falls into its final sleep in a dream of flowers and 
green fields. 

Such is our state as soon as life becomes more than 
the simplest sensation. Imagination begins to work, 
and we begin to dream. While we have yet no past 
our visions are but brief; the sorrows and the glad- 
ness, the incidents, the objects, the desires, and the 
expectancies out of which we shape them are close 
about us. In early youth, the space is small which 
each vision fills ; but more exciting is it than when, in 
after days, it fills a larger space ; for it is the first 
awakening of the soul to mystery and wonder in the 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY; 303 

midst of eternity and the universe. How sweet, and 
lovely, and generous are the dreams which then fill 
the fancy ! Who that has had can forget them, or ever 
recall them, without emotion ? What a beautiful earth 
this is while the illusion of the fresh soul is yet spread 
over it ! As far as the eye can see our Eden smiles ; 
and beyond the girdle of the mountains or the sea a 
boundless Eden is fancied which is fairer still. Spirits 
are in the forest ; sounds " that syllable men's names " 
are heard among the branches ; the low summer wind 
makes strange music in the glen ; and in the loneliness 
by the stream there is solitude which is full of inspira- 
tion. At such times, while the high dome of heaven 
is bright in the glory of the noon or pale in the star- 
light evening, youth will have dreams which it is good 
to have had, even though subsequent experience may 
be but contrast and disappointments — dreams of love, 
and hope, and virtue, of bold purposes and brave 
deeds, of unselfish exertions and of generous achieve- 
ment. But early dreams are often gloomy also. Youth 
is not all a season of joyfulness. Shadows of uncer- 
tainty rest upon its untried life ; anxieties and terrors 
arise to it with the unfolding of its opening faculties. 
Enthusiasm has its reaction of apathy ; and wings 
which were plumed for an aspiring flight relax in the 
mere attempt, and, instead of bathing in the lustre of 
the skies, drag heavily upon the ground. If there 
is nothing more joyous than a smile upon the lip of 
youth, the light of rapture in its eye, the blush of 
gladness on its cheek, so there is nothing more sad 
than the cloud of despondency on its brain or the 
sting of grief within its heart. And many are its 



804 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

sources of -unrest and pain. It has such in its curiosi- 
ty, in its passions, in its best and highest qualities. It 
is bewildered with conjectures ; it is irritable with long- 
ings for truth which it cannot obtain ; it is troubled 
with the problems of existence ; it questions the in- 
finite and eternal by which it is surrounded, and can 
get no answer that satisfies it ; it dashes itself against 
barriers which guard the mystery of being, and is 
bruised in the concussion ; it would climb to the 
heights of heaven, and in the first bound it is flung 
back upon the earth. It has not learned to wait, to 
accept, to believe, and to endure. The very plenitude 
of force often becomes a torment ; and the turbulence 
and agitation which in due order are to settle into peace 
and strength may be little short of misery while they 
last. The best and highest qualities may be in youth, 
as we have said, sources of unrest and pain. Talents 
may be in it, and a consciousness of them, with the 
dreary conviction that they can never be cultivated. 
Poverty, like doom, may hang over it, and inevitable 
ignorance oppress its abilities, yet leave it alive to the 
passion for exertion and quick to the shame of impo- 
tence. Destiny besets it behind and before, and 
genius is only there to feel the bondage. Sensibili- 
ties and affections, as well as intellect and imagi- 
nation, may be made fountains of bitterness in the 
heart of youth — sensibilities disregarded or tortured ; 
affections broken, wasted, or suppressed ; so that what 
in healthy nature would be elements of joy and vigor 
are changed into those of suffering and disease. Then 
are the dreams of youth uncheering and disquieted ; 
and many there are who have them. 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 305 

The wonderful dreams which De Quincey first put 
into literature came to him while he was yet in youth. 
The peculiarity is not, as we have said, that he had 
dreams, for such we all have ; it was in the kind of 
dreams. Leaving out the circumstances that moulded 
and colored them, his dreams received their peculiarity 
from his genius and his training, from the specialty of 
his faculties and the quality of his education. His 
faculties were such as would not only lead a man to 
dream, but to dream, as he did, gloriously. The educa- 
tion which disciplined these faculties, giving him a key 
to the richest mental treasures of the world, was such 
as would supply for his dreams luxuriant substance and 
impress on them forms of beauty. There is, for in- 
stance, that peculiar intellect of his — an intellect 
which you feel to be most simple in the unity of its 
life, and yet most manifold in the diversity of its ac- 
tion. It used to be said of Braham that his voice was 
a marvel, insomuch that it contained every order of 
voice ; but sing as he might, whether in the sweetness 
of the treble or in the power of the bass, the distinct 
individuality of Braham was ever in the song. And 
so it is with the intellect of De Quincey : whether it 
is meditative in gentle thought or sharp in analytic 
criticism; whether it explains the subtle charms of 
Wordsworth's poetry or unravels a knotty point in 
Aristotle's logic ; whether it detects a lurking feeling 
in the heart of Avoman or explores the obscure pro- 
fundity of Kant's philosophy, — it is as perfect in each 
as if it was fitted only for that. It is an intellect which 
no one can mistake, and yet it is an intellect which 
no one can define. Will you call it deep ? You 
20 



306 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

will not speak untruly ; but it is also high. If at one 
time it is down amidst the mysteries of thought, it is 
at another high and soaring amidst the lights of 
science. Not that it is properly scientific in acquisi- 
tion and exactness ; but it is so in spirit and in sympa- 
thy. In one sense it is a broad intellect, embracing 
large capacities for knowledge, and with an athletic 
vigor to supply them, having a vigilant spirit of in- 
quiry and a catholic spirit of fellowship with all seek- 
ers. In another sense it is a keen intellect, with the 
eye of a cat to glance into the dark, with the eye of an 
eagle to bear the ardors of the sun, quick as a hawk 
to pounce upon a brilliant falsehood, slow as a ferret 
to pursue a sophistry through all its hidden sinuosities. 
So likewise it is a logical intellect, acute in the dis- 
covery of agreements and differences, fertile in methods 
of comparison and decisive in rectitude of inference, 
having in equal degree of excellence the sagacity which 
admits no feeble link into the chain of an argument, 
and the strength which can carry it on in length and 
continuity until the whole is perfect. Yet it is also a 
vagarious intellect ; it goes whither it will ; the beaten 
road cannot restrain it ; but ever and anon it disports 
amidst the amplitude of the surrounding country. 
Now it is climbing hills ; then losing itself in glens. 
Now it is thinking in the wood ; then it is racing on 
the plain. At one time it muses over its own image in 
the lake ; at another looks for itself visioned in the 
clouds or wandering through the stars. But, vagrant 
as it may seem, there is a soul of order which never 
ceases to direct it ; wild, wayward, and capricious as 
it may appear, it has illuminated centres of which it 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 307 

never loses sight ; and, much as it may diverge, it has 
always a clear discernment of its course. Then there 
is that memory of his, too, quite as peculiar as his in- 
tellect. It is rare to meet with any man who has a 
memory so large as De Quincey has in whom it is at 
the same time so personal. Men of ample outward 
memory seldom dwell much upon their inward life. 
Men who do dwell much upon their inward life hardly 
ever have ample outward memory. The first assertion 
in this proposition is illustrated in such men as Sir 
Walter Scott, and the second in such men as Charles 
Lamb. In each class memory is a faculty of power ; 
and the power is so different in its direction in one 
class from what it is in the other that we could scarce- 
ly suppose there could be found a single mind who 
should have the faculty with the power which it has in 
both. Such a mind, however, is De Quincey's. Many 
of his writings are directly autobiographical ; many of 
them are indirectly so ; but, while most distinctly and 
most minutely personal, we know from the impression 
which he leaves upon us that the field of his memory 
infinitely expands beyond the circle of his experience. 
This is the more remarkable, since he gives us his ex- 
perience with so thorough a searching of his soul, and 
in recollections which are so sad and so impassioned. 
But still he keeps his memory clear and full ; and, upon 
philosophy, history, literature, art, science, nature, and 
humanity, it shows as wide excursions as if it never 
lingered upon self and an horizon whose transparency 
private sorrows have not darkened, but adorned. Out 
of all it is furnished and enriched. It is no less ac- 
curate than ample, nor more wealthy than it is ready. 



308 ILLUSTBATIONS OF GENIUS. 

It has trifles for small topics ; it has grandeur for noble 
ones ; it can draw from the distant or the near ; it 
commands the centuries of the past as it does the hours 
of the present, and is as familiar with the annals of the 
earth as with the gossip of the neighborhood. Even 
the most abstract subjects in the many and miscellane- 
ous volumes of De Quincey's writings spring in some 
way out of suggestions or associations of his individ- 
ual life ; yet they are treated with as extensive a range 
of reflection, with as independent a grasp of thought, 
and with as much of impersonal illustration as if they 
came to the mind from the remotest regions of specu- 
lation. A memory of rare qualities indeed is that of 
De Quincey's, which gives the vividness of self to ob- 
jective acquisition and to the consciousness of self 
the enlargement of imperial knowledge. Conceive 
these two primal faculties of intellect and memory as 
thus existing, active in an imagination of prodigal and 
various energy ; grand at times ; in turn, gay ; spor- 
tive now as a child from school, and then solemn as a 
prophet from the wilderness ; now like the song with 
which a mother puts a babe to sleep upon her bosom, 
and again like a lofty anthem which fills a mighty 
temple with the pomp of music. Conceive these facul- 
ties alive with all fine, brave, and honorable sensibili- 
ties — alive to whatever is lovely in the works of crea- 
tion or to whatever is grand in the spirit of man : con- 
ceiving thus, we form our ideas of De Quincey's genius ; 
and out of this genius were the substance and the shap- 
ings of his dreams. 

Not by opium, therefore, as an efficient cause, were 
those extraordinary visions which he first revealed 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 309 

in The Confessions. Opium was, indeed, the exciting 
means ; but the power was within, or the vision would 
not have come. What fool is he, then, who thinks that, 
by eating opium like De Quincey, he might have vis- 
ions like De Quincey ? He might as well fancy that, 
by putting on De Quincey's hat, he would have De 
Quincey' s brain ; or that, by wrapping himself in one 
of De Quincey's old waistcoats, he would become pos- 
sessed of his experience. It is said that Dryden used 
to take physic as a preparation for composition. Settle 
might have done the same ; but his composition would 
not on that account have been more like to Dry- 
den's. He would have all the pain, but nothing of 
the power ; ^' the contortions " without " the inspira- 
tion ; " for salts or castor oil, we apprehend, are not 
chemically different in the stomach of a genius and in 
the stomach of a dunce. Cleanse a dunce you cannot 
from the heavy stuff of dulness ; you cannot with any 
infusion put into him the fire of wit ; and where there 
is no fire, and no possibility of kindling it, fuel is to no 
purpose. Though duncehood may torture itself and 
fiercely cry aloud, it is still but as the priesthood of 
Baal ; and no lightning from above answers to its call. 
It is with genius as it is with goodness, or, indeed, as 
it is with sin too ; a man has it not by reason of any 
thing which goeth into his mouth. Give a booby the 
nectar of the gods, and he is no more divine than he 
was before. The visions, therefore, which De Quincey 
had from opium, whether of glory or of gloom, had 
their elements in his nature, his education, and his 
genius. Whence the raptures of his Saturday nights 
devoted to the opera ? Evidently in that love of music 



310 ILLUSTRATIONS OP GE^^IUS. 

wliich all his writings incidentally make manifest, in 
the affinity of his mind with gorgeousness, in the sus- 
ceptibility of his fancy to picturesque combinations, 
and in those latent emotions of a poetic temperament 
which would find the most perfect expression prepared 
for them in the impassioned breathings of the lyrical 
and dramatic imagination of the higher opera. Gifted 
by genius, refined by education, enveloped in the silence 
of thought, full with the dormant mysticism of youth, 
the excitement of opium made the opera, which would 
have been to a vulgar mind but a blaze of confusion, 
to him an Elysium of delight. And those terrible 
dreams, which made him so long a desolate and an af- 
frighted pilgrim amidst the wild and strange imagin- 
ings of Oriental life, he ascribes simply to the entrance 
of a Malay one day into his dwelling, to whom he 
gave, as a sort of alms, a potion of opium. " Behold 
how great a matter a little fire kindleth ! '' for there 
was a great matter laid up in the mind of De Quincey, 
of suggestive associations and of much reading, or the 
little fire of the Malay's entrance would not have 
kindled that great fire of inward torments which con- 
sumed him for many months. It was out of a nature 
as capacious as sensitive came Suspiria de Profundis — 
those sighings from the depths, those recallings of un- 
wonted sorrows, those lookings down into abysses of 
awful experiences, which none can view, even in mere 
description, without trembling to the centre of his 
heart and thinking to the centre of his soul. 

Now, if by any means, by opium or otherwise, some 
men might have dreamed dreams and seen visions such 
as De Quincey dreamed and savv^, none could have 



THOMAS DE QXJINCEY. 311 

philosophized on them as he has, none but he could 
have so analyzed them. With other men they would, 
indeed, have been only the baseless fabrics of so many 
visions ; soon they v^ould have melted into thin air 
and have left not a wreck behind. But with De Quin- 
cey it was not so. He did not let them thus evaporate. 
Once in his mind, he must know the conditions of their 
existence ; once there, they had a place in the universe 
of things ; and, though they might have come out " of 
Chaos and old Night," they had now a being, an order, 
and a law ; and this being, order, and law, our thinker, 
not less than dreamer, must investigate. Accordingly, 
the phantasms which had passed before him in the 
trances of the spirit he calls back into the wakefulness 
and the light of memory, and then subjects them to the 
scrutiny of reason. He leads us into the secret cham- 
bers of the mind, and describes to us the brilliant, the 
grotesque, the dismal, the fearful images with which 
these chambers had once been crowded. He opens to 
us intricate and hidden passages of consciousness. He 
conducts us to deep and obscure caverns of emotion, 
and so floods them with the light of his experience that 
we see them in their whole extent, in all their crannies 
and in all their windings. He shows us how remote 
and powerful illusions may be connected with almost 
unnoticeable sensations, and he traces the chain through 
the links of association by which they are so connected. 
He shows us how prolifically the germs are deposited 
in the soil of the mind, which even a common drug 
may fructify into delicious pleasures, into horrible 
pains, into passions that torture, into phantoms which 
affright, into ide^s that assume the force of realities ; 



312 ILLirSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

how time and space are so changed that instants seem 
eternities and the measure of a chamber has the vague- 
ness of immensity, and all in reference to a worthy 
end ; for, in exhibiting the influence of this drug, he 
draws attention to the inscrutable workings of our 
spiritual nature, and to the awe with which a nature so 
wonderfully and fearfully formed should be regarded. 
And this impression De Quincey leaves by the man- 
ner in which he tells his dreams. If some men could 
have had such dreams, they might still have been un- 
able to understand the philosophy of them ; and, had 
they understood the philosophy, most men would have 
failed when they attempted to combine in language such 
passion, description, and metaphysics as are found uni- 
ted in The Confessions of De Quincey. The strength 
of impulse and the heat of fancy which would have 
predisposed certain minds for such visions would have 
left them mthout the faculty of analysis ; or, if that 
faculty might by possibility have been connected with 
such predisposition, the action of it must in general 
have chilled the fervor which the description of the 
visions would have needed. It is as if there should 
be in the same mental individuality the enthusiasm of 
a mystic, the subtilty of a schoolman, and the diction 
of a poet. And this is exactly the case with De 
Quincey. He is a mystic when he dreams ; when he 
scrutinizes his dreams he is a schoolman ; and when he 
tells them he is a poet. In these Confessions of his 
we have the most fascinating grace of narrative and 
wonders more exciting than those which stirred our 
boyish curiosity in the Arabian Nights ; we have a 
wealth and glow of imagery that not only give splen- 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 313 

dor to the surface of the story, but that are woven into 
its texture ; we have transitions of feeling so deli- 
cately managed as show that the most skilful art is 
only perfect nature ; and a music, so grand at times, 
at times so sweetly sad, mingles with the whole, that 
we linger as we read, until its harmony pervades our 
thoughts. Each word is most distinct ; and yet there is 
always more meaning than meets the ear — suggestion 
which stirs the mind, and ideas which do not overbur- 
den or obscure expression, but which come by means of 
expression and come after it. The ideal, the grand, and 
the wild are brought into view with the wretched and 
the real ; but each has its place in the picture ; each con- 
tributes to the unity of the impression and adds to the 
effect. The sick self is revealed without being offen- 
sive or obtrusive ; and exceptional conditions of mind, 
though as oases in the wilderness of human loneli- 
ness, are made out of that loneliness to cry with a 
piercing eloquence. It is not the barbarous cry of 
a savage in pain ; it is not the harsh and mindless 
cry of the maniac among tombs ; it is the threno- 
dy of a soul that has gone astray, but that is still in- 
spired. In telling the story of his dreams, the most 
squalid scenes gain dignity in the pathos with which 
De Quincey overshadows them ; and the most morbid 
terrors, as he reveals them, have the gloom, not of dis- 
ease, but of tragedy. 

We have dwelt long on this visionary tendency of 
De Quincey' s genius, but we think not disproportion- 
ately. It forms a very striking and distinctive charac- 
teristic of his genius, and we could not rapidly pass 
it over. The spirit of a dreamer, we believe, was 



314 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

always largely his ; it was in him from the beginning, 
was in him by constitution ; and this possibly, no less 
than sujffering and illness, may have led him nncon- 
sciously to opium. The action of opium corresponded 
with the faculty of Nature ; and it was thus as much 
the issue of a latent aptitude as it was the recognized 
origin of certain determinate effects. But it is not in 
connection with opium alone that we notice in De 
Quincey the spirit of a dreamer. Whenever his mem- 
ory is concerned with his own personal past we find 
him in his dreamy temper. Places, persons, incidents, 
feelings, as visioned through his remembrance, take us. 
away as completely from vulgar and from every-day 
life as a minstrel's ballad or a pilgrim's story. It is 
not that we doubt in any way their reality ; we feel 
that they are genuine, that they belong to humanity 
and earth ; but we feel also that they have relation 
to a mind on whose recollections they have charms 
not their own. When we read De Quincey' s reminis- 
cences of Grassmere, of Society at the Lakes, of Charles. 
Lloyd, of Charles Lamb, of Walking Stewart, of Ed- 
ward Irving, of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and others, 
we are so inwrapped in the ideal, so uncarnalized, so 
carried out of our routine experience, that no legend 
of olden time and no tale of distant lands could more 
excite us. We know not how it may be with others, 
but thus it is with us. The English Mail Coach, in 
one of De Quincey's Essays, is almost as much a thing 
ethereal as the " ship " of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner ; 
and there is nothing in that poem more mystically fear- 
ful than De Quincey's Vision of Sudden Death, with 
the addition, that this Vision has a fearful human in- 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 315 

terest. When strong affection unites with memory, 
then with the picturings of the dreamy past there come 
the low sighings of the musing heart, and, as in the 
article on his brother, a story of strange adventures, 
imbued with a lyrical melancholy, approaches the mod- 
ulation of an elegiac song. When it is merely his im- 
agination that is active, — when in its creative energy 
it works impersonally, emancipated from all restraints 
of individual limitations, — the dream spirit shows it- 
self in wilder, deeper, broader, and grander conjura- 
tions. A wonderful art has De Quincey of bringing 
the unfamiliar near, and yet keeping it in its closest 
nearness still unfamiliar. He makes a statement which 
in its simple annunciation startles ; he varies it until you 
see it at every side ; and he unfolds it until it conceals 
no more ai^ implication or an inference : still, as ever, 
it is strange ; still, as ever, it is exciting. He does 
not wear out the novelty of his statement or of his 
theme by elucidation ; he only confirms and brightens 
it. It is not from your ignorance that he asks for won- 
der ; he exacts it from your knowledge, and renders 
marvel greater as his meaning becomes more clear. 
He will put your mind at once in possession of a given 
condition of wretchedness. Your mind grasps it in 
the fulness of its dimensions, and you see it in every 
part of its boundary. You think you have no more 
to learn and no more to feel. You quickly are aware 
that you have only begun to learn and begun to feel. 
A kind of suffering, which is in its very nature isolated, 
you fancy you have fathomed as soon as it is described ; 
but this is only the mere point from which De Quincey 



316 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

starts. He opens to you a huge grief, and the sympa- 
thy which he at once excites seems hardly capable of in- 
crease ; but incident follows after incident, circumstance 
after circumstance, and each comes upon the other to 
the end with an aggravation of affliction. You are 
carried along the story as in the course of a train of 
reasoning ; distress succeeds distress with an inevitable 
sequence ; it is the very logic of misfortune ; and, 
while it harrows your feelings, it interests your under- 
standing. If you consider a story of De Quincey's in 
its dramatic relations not less than in the narrative 
ones, you will distinguish the author's peculiarity. In 
the first act you conceive that you have the whole of 
the tragedy. A calamity, singular and dreadful, is 
presented with such unity of misery that progress of 
event, action, or emotion would be, we might suppose, 
impossible. But here it is that we see the energy of 
the dramatic element in De Quincey's genius and the 
resources of his imagination. He does not, as in the 
common methods, go on through a succession of deep- 
ening sorrows to some final suffering, but, in a meth- 
od which is entirely his own, brings out all the pain 
which the original affliction contains, until the mind 
gradually enters into its immensity. In the mean time, 
scenery, illusion, and circumstances, in continuance or 
in change, are made to correspond perfectly around the 
central idea and its animating passion. But coherent, 
artistical, and in order as these creations are, both in 
their narrative and dramatic relations, there is yet a 
wildness in them which makes them appear as if they 
were formed in a wizard's trance. Our space does not 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 317 

admit of illustrations ; but they will know what we 
mean who have read the Household Wreck, the Flight 
of a Tartar Tribe, the Spanish Nun. 

De Quincey is not a dreamer out of season. When 
mental vigilance is required, no man is more " \vide 
awake." Then he is emphatically a seer, and one with 
the sharpest and clearest intellectual discernment. In 
apprehending and in discriminating, his "mind's eye " 
is both far-reaching and minute. He looks deeply and 
remotely into centuries of time, and he pierces with finest 
vision into the sources of intellectual and moral life. He 
beholds as with an inward sense the conditions of olden 
nations, the working of their institutions, the spirit and 
the action of their religions, their philosophies, and their 
literatures. Away in the distance of ages, through the 
mists of vapory traditions, across the deserts of time 
strewed with the ruins of successive and intervening 
civilizations, he can discern the relations of an event, 
the significance of a custom, the essence of a character. 
Nor is his faculty less powerful or acute in the system of 
life and letters to v/hich he himself belongs. To the 
power and acuteness of this seeing faculty we may 
trace much of the excellence of De Quincey's criticism. 
His rectitude, his fulness, and his lucidness of spiritual 
vision afford him, in an eminent degree, the primary 
conditions of true literary judgment. By this, with 
a true instinct, he sees into the genius of an author ; 
and by this, aided by his wonderful learning, he sees 
all round the life of an author. In a manner which 
belongs to himself, with an originality so individ- 
ual as to defy imitation, De Quincey makes the 



318 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

life and the genius reciprocally illustrate each other ; 
and in both, by this mutual illustration, he reveals and 
vindicates the integrity of the man. By incidents in 
the life, unnoticed until he drew attention to them, he 
surprises you constantly with the discovery of secrets 
which lurked in the distinction or genius of his au- 
thor ; and again by unconscious manifestations which 
he detects in his author's genius he frequently clears 
up mysteries in his life. For confirmation of these 
views, we refer to his essay on Shakspeare. We can 
only refer to it ; but that is enough. The most curso- 
ry reader will observe in it, without the aid of a com- 
mentary, what unsuspected lustre the critic brings out 
from the obscurities of biography to shine upon the 
path of the poet's genius ; what meanings hidden in 
the poet's writings he draws forth, which, impersonal 
as they seem, give us some arcana of the poet's indi- 
vidual and impassioned experience. In this there is 
implied the excellence of De Quincey's criticism — in 
discovery, in selection, in removing errors, in supply- 
ing omissions, and in the suggestiveness and the preg- 
nancy of its distinctions. Whoever studies De Quin- 
cey's writings with an observant spirit will note evi- 
dences of these qualities in every essay, almost in 
every page. The light of his interpretation reveals 
ever some new thing in ancient authors ; and even 
modern authors with whom we had supposed ourselves 
most familiar, brought under its beams, have ideas for 
us which we did not before find out. These novelties 
are presented ^\dth only such an amount of disquisition 
as is. strictly needed. De Quincey has too much of 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 319 

his own to say to repeat what has been said by others ; 
and he has too much that is distinctive to say to en- 
large on what is common. Herein we perceive his ex- 
cellence of selection. He gives his reader credit for 
some previous knowledge ; and so he does not go over 
the whole subject. He takes for granted that his au- 
thor has made the impression which it was the destiny 
of his genius to make ; and he does not undertake to 
help him. He assumes that the instinct for which all 
art exists has not been false or inert until he began to 
write ; and he assumes, likewise, that criticism has not 
been idle in the great field of the ideal until he began 
to work. He does not condescend to write to those 
below the standard of instructed intelligence ; he at- 
tempts not to arouse invincible stupidity nor to be 
within the reach of elementary ignorance. What is 
done, therefore, he considers done, and seems willing 
to believe that his readers are as well aware as he is 
that certain points are, for all duration, settled. He 
accordingly chooses only such positions as remain still 
unoccupied in the literature of criticism. He knows, 
for instance, that, in regard to any transcendently great 
writer, no primary question is open. A most impor- 
tant point to be examined and defined concerning a 
great writer will seldom have relation to the essence 
of his genius, but will rather be something which is 
indirect and circumstantial. What can be said in this 
way now on Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, or 
many besides ? What such immortals are to letters 
and to man involves no leading points to be decided ; 
but often, What was each to his age ? What was the 



320 ILLTJSTRATIOIS^S OF GENIUS. 

age to him ? What were the influences about him ? 
What was he to them ? how far their slave, how far their 
sovereign? These and numberless other subsidiary 
inquiries will always suggest topics of vital interest. 
"Upon such inquiries De Quincey spends a good deal of 
his strength ; and he never leaves them until they 
shine with a splendor that throws back illumination 
on the genius to which they are but accidental associa- 
tions. After going with De Quincey through inqui- 
ries which appear, at first, but most subordinately inci- 
dental, we feel, when they are closed, that we have clearer 
insight of the author's genius, that we have more con- 
sciousness of its power, that we have more solemn im- 
pressions of its greatness than when we have read ambi- 
tious and elaborate reviews which propose no less than 
to examine inwardly and outwardly the sublime struc- 
ture of a great man's mind. In this method we recognize 
the excellence of De Quincey, which we have mentioned, 
in removing errors and in supplying omissions. Since 
criticism became a fine art, no man has more ennobled 
it than De Quincey ; no man has infused into it more 
force of meditation or glorified it with more beauty ; and 
yet not a little of his best criticism consists in removing 
errors, in supplying omissions. This task, which some 
— who from their ignorance would not know an error, 
and who, if they did know it, could not, from their fee- 
bleness, correct it — might think too humble for their 
abilities, De Quincey has made the occasion of composi- 
tions as exquisite and as eloquent as any that enrich 
our language. But De Quincey's criticisms stop not in 
correction and addition, but use correction and addition 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 321 

as the means of opening ideas to the mind that are 
grand in wisdom and of quickening sentiments in the 
heart that are steeped in tenderness. In demolishing 
the small critics of Shakspeare and their big preten- 
sions, how profoundly, at the same time, does he teach 
us of Shakspeare himself! In exposing the shallow 
criticism of Addison and the conceited pedantry of 
Shaftesbury, how deeply does he carry us into that 
soul, as fathomless as planetary space, in which the 
mild spirit of the Spectator was lost and into which the 
vain mind of the learned lord had never entered ! Even 
in correcting some mistakes as to the circumstances of 
Goldsmith and as to the condition of literature and liter- 
ary men in his time, benignly and admiringly does he 
open to us the sweetness of that humanest genius, of 
that most kindly nature ; with reverential sympathy 
he touches on his life ; with a gracious humor, which 
brings the light of laughter and the tear of thought 
together to the eye, he glances at harmless follies and 
at ludicrous distress; with a pathos which will have 
nothing but the tear he pauses over graver sorrows ; 
with indignant respect he does justice to nobleness 
which the dull could not perceive and which the envi- 
ous would not acknowledge, and, while giving due 
praise to an eloquent biographer, insinuates, with an 
art that is entirely his own, a more affecting and im- 
pressive estimate of Goldsmith in a few lines than all 
the volumes concerning him can inspire which eulogists 
have written. Still more decisively can we say this 
with regard to De Quincey's treatment of Pope. Noth- 
ing can we think of which comes nearer to the perfec- 
tion of philosophic criticism. Upon no writer in our^ 
21 



322 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GEXITJS. 

tongue has there been so much criticism expended as 
on Pope except Shakspeare, and upon no writer ex- 
cept Shakspeare has there been expended more false 
and inexact criticism. Of Pope, as well as Shakspeare, 
critics have been everlastingly saying the things which 
they ought not to have said. In saying of Pope, as 
De Quincey charges them, that he was a writer of the 
French school, that he was of an inferior grade of 
poets, and that his distinctive merit was correctness, 
they have been saying, as De Quincey has shown, what 
they ought not to have said ; and he has shown it with 
an amazing prodigality of learning, logic, and illustra- 
tion. What they ought to have said, but did not say, 
or did not say with sufficient power, he has said for 
them with all adequacy and fitness — that Pope was 
a great, impassioned, musical thinker of social life ; 
that he had not personal malignity enough for a 
satirist nor sustained strength of intellect enough 
for a philosopher ; that beauty and tenderness had 
more accordance with his genius and his nature than 
the severity of a chastener or the speculation of a sage ; 
that he was a man of strong affections, which unfolded 
themselves in filial devotion and in friendship, but 
which had deeper capacities still in silence ; that there 
were innate germs of grandeur in his soul which did 
not open into power or which had but imperfect 
growth ; that especially, notmthstanding his occa- 
sional levity and his seeming latitudinarianism, he 
had sincere Christian instincts ; and that these have 
prompted and inspired some of his truest poetry. Ac- 
cordingly, and this we presume ourselves to add, there 
is in all Pope's best poetry, either latent or in expres- 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 323 

sion, much of struggle with the moral on one side and 
with the mysterious on the other ; much of impassioned 
pathos and much of spiritual aspiration. We do not 
maintain that others have not written fine things on 
Pope as well as De Quincey — for instance, Hazlitt 
has ; but no one else has consecrated Pope's genius 
with such a compact and massive monument of criti- 
cism — a monument, we venture to assert, which will 
be as durable as the most classic of Pope's own poems. 
And here we may properly bring into view the value 
of De Quincey's critical distinctions, as one of the 
most valuable of them occurs in connection with his 
criticism of Pope. It is the distinction which he 
makes between '^ the literature of knowledge " and 
^' the literature of power, '^ and which he most philo- 
sophically as well as most eloquently establishes and 
explains. This distinction, as every thoughtful reader 
will perceive, is a pregnant and most suggestive one, 
profound with import, yet simple of apprehension, and 
as easy of application as it is original. It shows us 
that not that which teaches is greatest, but that which 
is inspired and which inspires. The facts and forms 
which constitute the matter of instruction have a lit- 
erature most changeable, most perishable ; the life by 
which a great work of genius comes into being, by 
which it continues in being, renders it an integral and 
immortal thing ; it alters not and it dies not. As this 
is greater in its nature, so it is higher in the order of 
its influence ; and such a conviction many of us in 
these times need to feel. In our age, when the physi- 
cal and the comfortable claim to#be uppermost ; when 
the highest evidence of life is looked for in the palpa- 



324 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

He ; when even the ghosts who have put off the body 
and are gone beyond the grave are called on to make 
their existence known by drumming on a table ; when 
the love which was ineffable in the beating heart is no 
proof to memory that it is deathless, but when conso- 
lation is found in the leaps of chairs ; when sainted 
thought which is left behind has not the power to per- 
suade us that still the thinker lives^ but a row among 
tin pots or a dance among the pokers strengthens our 
trembling faith and confirms our feeble hope — and all 
this is done through the organisms of electric spinsters 
or the potent intestines of biological mountebanks, — 
in such a state of things, any man who stands on the 
side of the spiritual and ideal is a genuine benefactor 
to society and among the best of workers. It is well 
that some men have courage to confess to owning souls, 
and have the grace not to feel insulted when others put 
faith in their confession, not to feel it strange or im- 
pertinent when they are addressed as having within 
them an essence which differs from the clod ; it is well 
that some should believe that man is more than a ma- 
chine for making money, with an apparatus for digest- 
ing meat ; that the whole grandeur of destiny is not in 
cent, per cent, nor the whole duty of life in the regu- 
lation of the stomach ; it is well, we insist, that some 
should be zealous for the soul, and maintain, not with 
beggarly humility, but with regal confidence, the sub- 
stance, the reality, of the unmaterial. They should 
assert its sanctity and supremacy ; and, mth whatever 
grandeur they can assert them, they will always fall 
below the elevation of their theme. The body has 
nothing with which the soul has not concern as a sov- 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 325 

ereign ; but the soul has an economy of its own with 
which the body can only intermeddle as a servant. 
The ministers of the invisible are not to be rated as 
idle or as subordinate. In acting in the higher nature 
and /or it, they are working also for the lower nature ; 
they refresh it and they enrich it. The man who prays 
is not useless, even for the labors of the world, though 
he be but a hermit in the wilderness. The man who 
preaches with any soul does not speak in vain, though 
his words may seem to fall upon the wind. Temples 
have even an earthly value as well as cotton mills. 
Statues were once more a power than statutes ; and 
the spirit which once went into marble is still in other 
media which have more influence than laws. Song 
was before railroads, and will outlast them ; story is as 
old as time ; poetry is as natural as man ; and a thought, 
an emotion, is a fact not less real than a paper mill or 
. a pike staff. Some may not believe this ; but so it is. 
There are those who appear to esteem nothing a fact 
which does not relate to what they can see or feel, or 
taste or smell, and nothing as practical which does not 
relate to such a fact. Sublime ideas, great sentiments, 
one of this class never thinks of as in the sphere of 
realities, nor ever as adding to the sum of actual exist- 
ence. The power, therefore, which so acts upon the 
soul as to fill it with these ideas and sentiments, he 
does not consider as practical or as productive. If it 
were possible for you to put into the brain of this kind 
of man a thought which would have gladdened Pascal 
or into his bosom a feeling which would have enrap- 
tured Milton, he still would give you credit for noth- 
ing that was to much advantage. But tell him that 



326 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

there is a lake in the centre of Africa, and in that lake 
there is a fish ; that this fish has a blue tail, a yellow- 
fin on one side, and a green fin on the other ; that it 
has peach-colored eyes and slate-colored gills ; that its 
length is an inch and ten places of a decimal, — " Ay," 
he would say, " there is instruction ; there is a fact. I 
go for facts, for what a man can understand ; in short, 
for what is practical,''^ Now, if this statement were 
a truth, it has no observable connection with this man's 
existence ; it is a truth which . seems remoter than the 
farthest stars from his daily life ; there is no conceiva- 
ble way in which he can use it to make him richer or 
poorer, better or worse ; but the consciousness which a 
great thought or a noble emotion puts into his soul is 
a possession of which he cannot be deprived ; it is a 
fact as real as his existence, as grand as his immortal 
faculties. " What," says De Quincey, ^ do you learn 
from Paradise Lost ? Nothing at all. What do you 
learn from a cookery book ? Something new, some- 
thing you did not know before, in every paragraph. 
But would you therefore put the wretched cookery 
book on a higher level of estimation than the divine 
poem ? What you owe to Milton is, not any knowl- 
edge, of which a million separate items are still but a 
million of advancing steps on the same earthly level ; 
what you owe is power ; that is, exercise and expan- 
sion to your own latent capacity of sympathy with the 
infinite, where every pulse and each separate influx is 
a step upward — a step ascending, as upon a Jacob's 
ladder, from earth to mysterious altitude above the 
earth. All the steps of knowledge, from the first to 
the last, carry you farther on the same plane, but could 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 327 

never raise you one foot above your ancient level of 
earth ; whereas the Yery first step in power is a flight, 
is an ascending, into another element, where earth is 
forgotten." 

Sight, after all, is only a faculty of guidance. Mo- 
tion, work, or play demands the exercise of power ; 
and according to the power and the exercise of it will 
be achievement or enjoyment. We have the fruits of 
this active power, under the guidance of this seeing 
faculty, in many varieties of composition by De Quin- 
cey ; and in them all, not the perspicacity alone of a 
distinct seer, but the energy of a most vital thinker. 
As we consider thinking the central and pervading 
function of De Quincey's mind, we know of no other 
quality by which we can so definitely characterize his 
thinking as by that of vitality. 

Thinking, we have said, we consider the central and 
pervading function of De Quincey's mind. The sense 
to which we here restrict thinking we need not explain. 
Thinking, then, is the constant, continuous, natural ac- 
tion of De Quincey's inward life, almost as much so 
as breathing is of his bodily life. De Quincey has 
written no work of systematic thought •; and yet in the 
writings which he has thrown out, fugitive and frag- 
mentary as they are, he has given evidence that there 
is no system of thought which he has not mastered. 
Often on a topic seemingly the most remote from ab- 
stract philosophy, through a mere allusion or a hint, 
chasms are opened to you in the depths of speculation ; 
or you are wafted away into the realm of the ideal, 
where intellect shapes its theories without impediment 
amidst the freedom of the infinite. Often, in connec- 



828 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

tion with some incident, some flash of memory, or 
some pang of feeling, you are drawn into the laby- 
rinths of " consciousness,'' and exploring in winding 
ways for the sources of human knowledge ; you are 
engaged in the obscure inquiries of ontology, and ex- 
cited to an impassioned interest in the mysteries of 
being. In a passage of his individual experience ; in 
stating some aesthetic law ; in developing a rule of art ; 
in giving the reasons for some opinion on Wordsworth ; 
in accounting for the influence of Coleridge and in de- 
fining it ; in analyzing such minds as those of Shelley, 
Kant, or Goethe ; in examining their relations to let- 
ters and humanity, — De Quincey evinces, not the pro- 
foundness and subtilty alone of his metaphysical think- 
ing, but quite as much its flexibility and the vastness 
of its range. Not less a master is he in ethical, polit- 
ical thinking ; indeed, in all the thinking which en- 
ters into the various regulative and economic sciences 
of life. But it is not to thinking in these formal 
methods we especially refer ; we refer to that thinking 
which permeates the whole of De Quincey's writing. 
He does not, for special occasions, put his mind into 
reflective attitudes, as the ritualist at times gives his 
attention to religion, but rather, like the true saint, 
whose soul is always in that state of communion with 
holiness which is ready for prayer, his intellect is in 
that sustained condition of meditation which is ready 
for thought. The moment of expression has nothing 
to do but to shape it ; the material is ever abundant 
to exuberance ; not a line but is alive with the action 
of his cogitating brain. In all his communications 
with his readers he uses no sign which does not stand 



THOMAS J)E QUINCEY. 329 

for mind ; and, if his readers miss the mind, the fault 
is not in the sign, but in them. In the simplest things 
he gives character by thought to his phraseology ; in 
the manner in which he conceives of them he writes ; 
and thus his most familiar words become instinct with 
original, because with primitive, meaning. All that 
he writes is tested before he puts it into speech ; and 
the stamp of a genuine value is then upon it. All that 
he offers to the intelligence of others is first verified in 
his own ; and we feel by the spirit which throbs in it 
that he has put it honestly through his individual con- 
sciousness. Thus it is that the writings of De Quin- 
cey are so imbued with thinking ; thus it is that they 
are so constantly heaving to the surface jewels of truth 
which come up from the ocean depths of contempla- 
tion ; thus it is that they are so quickening to our 
faculties. Refine as De Quincey may, digress as he 
may, be as parenthetical as he chooses, he never be- 
comes tedious ; for every word has force, every word 
is fuel on the flame of thought, and increases its heat 
and brightens its light. Thus it is that De Quincey's 
compositions have such mental wealth. Not like shal- 
low cisterns are they in a dry atmosphere, which a 
casual shower merely moistens and which the next 
wind leaves dry again ; but like those seas and lakes 
which Nature from her everlasting springs replenishes, 
and that send up shapes of glory to the sun from out 
their fulness. Here are floods of soul in which the 
thinking spirit can bathe and refresh itself and come 
out braced and vigorous for exertion. These rich es- 
says are the product of incessant meditation ; and cold 
and passive must the faculties be which their inspira- 



330 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

tion cannot animate, wliich their suggestiveness cannot 
'incite. 

We shall offer some further observations to account 
for this vitality in De Quincey's thinking. We ascribe 
it first to the emotional temperament of his nature. 
He can never separate thinking from life. He can- 
not set one side of his brain going like a " calcu- 
lating machine/' then set the other side to watch it, 
and thus be, as some mathematical Malaprop would 
phrase it, " two gentlemen at once." In whatever he 
does the whole man is concerned ; all his faculties 
work together, and, not least, those which are sensitive. 
He goes into his speculation as much with his heart 
as with his head ; and there is no subject which does 
not awaken his emotions when it interests his intellect. 
In his powerful criticism on the unity of Homer and 
the Iliad, nothing can be more affecting than his re- 
marks on the character of Achilles ; and an eloquence 
which profoundly moves the feelings is subservient to 
a strictness of argument which convinces the judgment. 
In a paper, the object of which is to prove that the 
Essenes were the disciples of Christ in Judea, the sen- 
sibility which he has in himself, and which he excites 
in his readers, for the sufferings and dangers of the 
early Christians, gives no less force than interest to 
his position ; it impregnates the reasoning with sym- 
pathy, and, by the pathos of sentiment, increases the 
cogency of thought. Impulse does not with De Quin- 
cey disturb logic ; on the contrary, impulse doubly 
aids his logic ; for while it enlivens it convinces. 
In this very essay, for instance, on The Essenes, De 
Quincey regards the demolition of Josephus as neces- 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 331 

sary to his purpose ; and accordingly he so completes 
his work that no divisible atom of credibility in Jose- 
phus remains to impede his way. In the course of do- 
ing it, his intellect is so cool that no mistake is left 
possible, and yet his passion is so much on fire that it 
utterly consumes its object. The first degree of base- 
ness which he ascribes to Josephus seems in itself su- 
perlative ; it seems enough for everlasting infamy ; and 
there we fancy we must stop. But not so. This step 
made firm, another yet below it is as strongly fixed, 
another, still another, and another, until we are so far 
downward in the pit of rascality that no ray of honor 
pierces the compactness of its gloom, and, blinded and 
dizzy, we hasten back again to light. But to be moved 
in this manner is exceptional with De Quincey ; and 
in the present case, too, his indignation is aroused 
against miscreancy by his love of true manhood, and 
his fierce exposure of guilt is incident to an aim beyond 
it. Habitually, the emotions which vitalize De Quin- 
cey' s thinking are sensibility to beauty, an ardor of 
desire after all that is transcendent in nature, science, 
art, in genius, in learning ; an innate spirit of humanity, 
a love of abstract studies, and a love of abstract truth ; 
scholastic zeal with poetic fervor, an intent earnest- 
ness in every inquiry related to the mysteries of man, 
his experience and his destiny. And hence, in the 
second place, we ascribe the vitality of De Quincey's 
thinking to his imagination. This is interpenetrative, 
impassioned, creative. It is a searcher of spirits ; it 
is a discerner of the subtle essences of things ; it enters 
into the hidden places of philosophy, of literature, and 
of civilization ; and, like a disimbodied soul, it takes note 



832 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

of the innermost workings, and brings out the record 
of them for the study of the world. The imaginative 
insight which can livingly scrutinize the genius of an 
individual and lay bare the fountains of its power be- 
longs only to the rarest minds ; and so, if De Quin- 
cey had done nothing in literature but explored, as he 
has done, all the latent deeps of "Wordsworth's poetry, 
he would have shown how largely the faculty was his 
to which the concealments of great souls are open. 
But how sublime is that introspective imagination, 
that might of spiritual conception, to which the dim 
ideas of primitive philosophies and the social pheno- 
mena of buried empires seem as transparent as house- 
hold thoughts, as palpable as immediate objects ! Old 
Greece is thus as familiar to him as yesterday's news- 
paper ; and he finds no more trouble in exposing the 
fallacies of Plato's Republic than he would in cor- 
recting the errors of a proofsheet. Rome is as plain- 
ly before him as Greece ; before his grand historic im- 
agination the clouds of centuries roll away as the mists 
of morning sweep up the mountains at the rising sun 
and leave their summits blazing in the golden light. 
Rome's imperial spaces are clear to his view : again 
her provinces are filled, her legions cover the world, 
and the crash of thrones is heard in the shock of her 
armies ; her cities are crowded ; the frenzy of power 
and of passion is in her throngs ; a cry from every land 
curses her in low tones, and at the same time begs for 
quarter in loud ones ; her triumphs celebrate in festal 
processions the miseries of nations ; her palaces are 
solid with dark stability, and crown her hills with lurid 
splendor ; races are in the circus ; fights are in the 



THOMAS BE QUINCEY. 333 

ampliitheatre ; yells of cannibal delight shriek from 
audiences made rapturous by sports of blood, agony, 
and fear. Rome, in fact, is at the summit of her do- 
minion and in the depths of her luxury ; her titanic 
institutions are in full action, and her gigantic appe- 
tites are sick with the surfeit of indulgence. Through 
De Quincey's imagination we look upon the vision and 
the terror of it, in his volume on the Caesars and his 
Essay on the Philosophy of Roman History ; through 
his imagination we see that it is a vision of death, that 
inarticulate prophecies of lamentation are in its acclama- 
tions, spectres sit around its banquets ; ruin is written 
with the invisible hand of Providence over all its por- 
tals, and the grim genius of destruction sits and laughs 
upon its strongest places. In a few pages we appre- 
hend more distinctly the causes of Rome's extinction 
than in all the volumes of Gibbon, eloquent and philo- 
sophic as they are. Like elemental fire, this imagina- 
tion of De Quincey's glows through every subject into 
which it enters, quickens it within, illumines it outside, 
and covers it with gorgeousness and beauty. With an 
actualizing energy it feels what is in the heart of an 
age and how the age lives in those who belong to it. 
Not merely as a philosophic abstraction does De Quin- 
cey know the spirit of an age, but also as it becomes 
incorporate in living personalities. Give him the ele- 
ments of the era, — that is, its moral, spiritual, and so- 
cial agencies, — then he gives you the consciousness 
into which they are formed in the individual. 

Take, as example, his contrast between the feelings 
of a Christian woman and a vestal virgin, in his arti- 
cle on Pope, and you will have the whole import of 



334 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

this idea in a passage which for imagination has noth- 
ing grander in poetry, and which for splendor of lan- 
guage has nothing loftier in eloquence. And, lastly, 
we ascribe the vitality of De Quincey's thinking to 
his humor. Grasping and tenacious as is his intellect; 
stern as are many of the problems which engage his 
thoughts ; passionately as he questions spirit and mys- 
tery for their secrets, as passionately as Jacob in the 
wilderness wrestled with the angel for his blessing ; 
isolated as he often is in the loneliness of feelings 
which cannot be shared, and the solitary pathos of 
whose utterance is as the song of an exile in a strange 
tongue in a strange land, understood not in its lan- 
guage, huXfelt in the sadness of its melody, — he has 
an exhilaration in thinking which keeps fresh the in- 
ward cheerfulness of his mind and sustains the vigor 
of its faculties. Thinking is to him a gladness, a joy 
in the life of his intellect ; and, be the subject ever so 
sombre or perplexing, the intensity of mental action 
put into it amounts at all times almost to ecstasy. 
This hilarity of thought is ever breaking from logic 
into laughter. The laughter is not often boisterous ; 
generally it is quiet ; but, however quiet, there is mirth 
of the soul in it, a mirth of mastery, a mirth not con- 
temptuous, not boastful, yet exultant, elastic in the 
pleasure of knowledge and of strength. The humor 
of De Quincey is never assumed or forced ; it is never 
introduced for a purpose, not even for what might 
seem the legitimate purpose of mitigating the severity 
of speculation ; it is not sought for ; but it comes, 
and it comes with all the individuality of the writer's 
nature. It comes, not with observation, and often 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 335 

when it is least expected ; so that, when we have our 
pocket handkerchiefs ready for tears which we are 
prepared to shed, quizzical imps are grinning at us 
through mists of oddity, and turn our long faces into 
fun. A very strange thing is this humor of De Quin- 
cey's ; sometimes puzzling, sometimes extravagant, 
sometimes impressive, and always original ; in one 
word, gay, frolicsome, and boylike, it capers into all 
sorts of pranks, calls into play schoolday fun and college 
raillery; delights in jests, mocks at gravity, and pulls 
the beards of dignitaries. It is at home in the Roman 
forum, and banters Cicero ; meets Lucullus at dinner 
and criticizes his bill of fare ; takes liberties with the 
Caesars and cracks jokes upon the patriots. As much at 
home is this humor of perennial youth in the highways 
and byways of Greece and with every leading character 
of Athens ; it is upon terms of " will you come and 
take pot luck with me '' familiarity. Its quizzes at 
the moderns are endless ; and for sly, insinuated 
comicality, for dry ridicule with a serious look, it is 
the very TartuiFe-ism of drollery. In moods more 
serious it can be cutting and derisive ; and in the case 
of a noted character, as in that of Josephus, it has at 
command a vocabulary of indignation which is exceed- 
ingly vernacular. In what we may call the " irony of 
the terrible,^ ^ nothing since the satire of Swift ap- 
proaches the article of De Quincey on Murder consid- 
ered as one of the Fine Arts. And thus we have this 
rare and varied humor, now in the grave robe of the 
critic, laughing at the learned ; then in the scarlet one 
of the satirist, giving the vicious to odium ; last in 
motley, suggesting wisdom in levity, and, like the 



336 ILLUSTEATIONS OF GENIUS. 

spirits that Shakspeare so clad, sharpening at one time 
the keenness of wit, with the sagacity of Touchstone ; 
and at another, with the bitter tenderness of Lear's 
" poor fool," deepening the force of pathos. By this 
humor in motley, how felicitously does De Quincey 
expose an absurdity and infuse the most exquisite 
drollery into the illustration by which he exposes it ! 
In his essay, for example, on Secret Societies, he laughs 
at the idea of a conspiracy to overthrow the Christian 
religion, one motive for which was to have the utmost 
freedom in licentious indulgence. But the very illus- 
tration which turns this idea into ridicule is itself a 
burlesque on parade of learning. Thus he does it in 
a story from the life of Pyrrhus, the Epirote : " One 
day a friend requested to know what ulterior purpose 
the king might mask under his expedition to Sicily. 
' Why, after that is finished,' replied the king, ' I mean 
to administer a little correction (very much wanted) to 
certain parts of Italy, and particularly to that nest of 
rascals in Latium.' ' And then,' said the friend. ' And 
then,' said Pyrrhus, ' next we go to Macedon ; and 
after that job's jobbed, next, of course, for Greece.' 
' Which done,' said the friend. ' Which done,' inter- 
rupted the king, ' as done it shall be, then we're off to 
tickle the Egyptians.' ' Whom having tickled,' pur- 
sued the friend, ' whither next ? ' ' Why, really, man, 
it's hard to say ; you give one no time to breathe ; but 
we'll consider the case in Persia ; and, until we've 
settled it, we can crown ourselves with roses and pass 
the time pleasantly enough over the best wine to be 
found in Ecbatana,' ' That's a very just idea,' replied 
the friend ; ' but, with submission, it strikes me that 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 337 

we miglit do that just now, and at the beginning of 
all these tedious wars, instead of waiting for the end/ 
' Bless me,' said Pyrrhus, ' if I ever thought of that 
before. Why, man, you're a conjurer ; you've dis- 
covered a mine of happiness. So, here boy, bring us 
roses and plenty of Cretan wine.' Surely, on the same 
principle, these French encyclopedists and Bavarian 
illuminati did not need to postpone any jubilees of 
licentiousness which they promised themselves to so 
very indefinite a period as their oration over the ruins 
of Christianity." 

In no composition of De Quincey's more than in 
this paper does he pour forth those deeply mystic and 
musical strains of eloquence which entitle him to rank 
with the greatest poets of thought ; and in no composi- 
tion of his more than in this does he indulge in quaint 
eccentricities of humor. Much has been written on the 
secrecy of Free Masonry ; but here is De Quincey's 
summary of it all : " When the novice is introduced 
into the conclave of Free Masons the grand master 
looks very fierce at him, and draws, which makes the 
novice look very melancholy, as he is not aware of 
having at any time, as yet, been guilty of any profane- 
ness, and fancies, therefore, that somebody must have 
been slandering him. Then the grand master or his 
deputy cites him to the bar, saying, ' What's that you 
have in your pocket ? ' To which the novice replies, 
' A guinea.' ' Any thing more ? ' ' Another g'uinea.' 
* Then,' replies the official person in a voice of thun- 
der, 'fork out ! ' Of course, to a man coming sword 
in hand, few people refuse to do that. This forms the 
first half of the mystery ; the second half, which is by 
22 



338 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

mucli the more interesting, consists entirely of brandy. 
In fact, this latter mystery forms the reason or the 
final cause for the elder mystery of the ' forkmg 
out: " 

After all, his more serious tone is his most natm'al 
and afiecting. If at home in the humorous and comi- 
cal, he is yet more at home in the tragical and profound. 
The solemn and religious awe with which he invests 
some great thought or beautiful conception is one of 
the principal charms of his writings. As a specimen 
of this, take the following, from the Suspiria : — 

" God smote Savanna la Mar, and in one night, by 
earthquake, removed her, with all her towers standing 
and population sleeping, from the steadfast foundations 
of the shore to the coral floors of ocean. And God 
said, ' Pompeii did I bury and conceal from men through 
seventeen centuries : this city I will bury, but not con- 
ceal. She shall be a monument to men of my mys- 
terious anger, set in azure light through generations to 
come ; for I will enshrine her in a crystal dome of my 
tropic seas.' This city, therefore, like a mighty galleon 
with all her apparel mounted, streamers flying, and tac- 
kling perfect, seems floating along the noiseless depths 
of ocean ; and oftentimes in glassy calms, through the 
translucid atmosphere of water that now stretches like 
an air-woven awning above the silent encampment, 
mariners from every clime look down into her courts 
and terraces, count her gates, and number the spires 
of her churches. She is one ample cemetery, and has 
been for many a year ; but, in the mighty calms that 
brood for weeks over tropic latitudes, she fascinates the 
eye with o. fata morgana revelation, as of human life 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 339 

still subsisting in submarine asylums sacred from tbe 
storms that torment our upper air. 

" Thither, lured by the loveliness of cerulean depths, 
by the peace of human dwellings privileged from mol- 
estation, by the gleam of marble altars sleeping in ever- 
lasting sanctity, oftentimes in dreams did I and the 
dark interpreter cleave the watery veil that divided us 
from her streets. We looked into the belfries, where 
the pendulous bells were waiting in vain for the sum- 
mons which should awaken their marriage peals ; to- 
gether we touched the mighty organ keys, that sang no 
jubilates for the ear of heaven, that sang no requiems 
for the ear of human sorrow ; together we searched the 
silent nurseries, where the children were all asleep, and 
had been asleep through ^ve generations, ' They are 
waiting for the heavenly dawn,' whispered the inter- 
preter to himself ; ' and, when that comes, the bells 
and the organs will utter a jubilate repeated by the 
echoes of paradise.' Then, turning to me, he said, 
' This is sad ; this is piteous ; but less would not have 
sufficed for the purpose of God. Look here : put into 
a Roman clepsydra one hundred drops of water ; let 
these run out as the sands in an hourglass, every drop 
measuring the hundredth part of a second, so that each 
shall represent but the three hundred and sixty thou- 
sandth part of an hour. Now, count the drops as they 
race along ; and, when the fiftieth of the hundred is 
passing, behold ! forty- nine are not, because already 
they have perished ; and fifty are not, because they are 
yet to come. You see, therefore, how narrow, how 
incalculably narrow, is the true and actual present. 
Of that time which we call the present, hardly a 



340 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

hundredth part but belongs either to a past which has 
fled or to a future which is still on the wing. It has 
perished, or it is not born ; it was, or it is not. Yet 
even this approximation to the truth is infinitely false ; 
for again subdivide that solitary drop, which only was 
found to represent the present, into a lower series of 
similar fractions, and the actual present which you ar- 
rest measures now but the thirty-sixth millionth of an 
hour ; and so by infinite declensions the true and very 
present, in which only we live and enjoy, will vanish 
into a mote of a mote, distinguishable only by a heav- 
enly vision. Therefore the present, which only man 
possesses, offers less capacity for his footing than the 
slenderest film that ever spider twisted from her womb ; 
therefore, also, even this incalculable shadow from the 
narrowest pencil of moonlight is more transitory than 
geometry can measure or thought of angel can over- 
take. The time which is contracts into a ma thematic 
point ; and even that point perishes a thousand times be- 
fore we can utter its birth. All is finite in the present ; 
and even that finite is infinite in its velocity of flight 
towards death. But in God there is nothing finite ; 
but in God there is nothing transitory ; but in God 
there can be nothing that tends to death. Therefore 
it follows, that for God there can be no present. The 
future is the present of God ; and to the future it is 
that he sacrifices the human present. Therefore it is 
that he works by earthquake ; therefore it is that he 
works by grief. O, deep is the ploughing of earth- 
quake ! O, deep,' (and his voice swelled like a sane- 
tits rising from the choir of a cathedral,) — ' O, deep is 
the ploughing of grief! But oftentimes less would 



THOMAS DE QITINCEY. 341 

not suffice for the agriculture of God. Upon a night 
of earthquake he builds a thousand years of pleasant 
habitations for man ; upon the sorrow of an infant he 
raises oftentimes from human intellects glorious vin- 
tages that could not else have been. Less than these 
iierce ploughshares v^rould not have stirred the stubborn 
soil. The one is needed for earth, our planet — for 
earth itself, as the dwelling-place of man ; but the oth- 
er is needed yet oftener for God's mightiest instru- 
ment ; yes,' (and he looked solemnly at myself,) ' is 
needed for the mysterious children of the earth.' " 

In a very distinctive sense we may refer to De Quin- 
cey as a reader. We feel in every page that he has 
read with all his genius. He has read with his feeling 
for the ludicrous ; and therefore the folly and the con- 
ceit of writers he turns to account, as well as their 
wisdom and their talents. In the most out-of-the-way 
places of learning he discovers snug spots for jesting 
and repose, and the heaviest rubbish of the schools he 
can kindle into a blaze of wit. Not less has he read 
with pathos and with moral sensibility. We find 
proof of this in the affecting and solemn allusions 
with which his writings abound to whatever in an- 
cient or modern literature deals with the sad or deep 
things of humanity ; but we feel it most when he is 
concerned with an individual character ; as, for in- 
stance, with Joan of Arc. With what force and ten- 
derness of soul De Quincey read^ we have evidence in 
this essay, by the force and tenderness with which he 
has applied the results of his reading. The sagacity 
of sympathy is grandly illustrated, and the subtilty of 
an inquiring spirit finely exercised, in this exposition 



342 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

of sublime Yirtue. That most tragic story, as De 
Quincey clears it from falsehood and exaggeration, 
comes with a divine simplicity to the heart; and the 
heroine, as he reads her life for us, as he describes her 
death, we see in all her truth, in the grace of her in- 
nocency and youth, in the strength of her courage and 
her patriotism, in the dignity of her meekness, in the 
majesty of her martyrdom ; and we love, pity, and re- 
vere the persecuted maiden, but we most exult in the 
triumphant saint. He has read with vital thought; 
he has thought into books and he has thought through 
them ; and such books as had room enough for the mo- 
tion of his mind he has in every part measured and 
examined. He has, accordingly, estimated the dimen- 
sions of great writers which none before him seem to 
have completely or accurately surveyed ; and in corners 
of even familiar authors he comes upon neglected import, 
suggestive to him of profound ideas. How false, after 
his explanation, seems the trite notion that Herodotus 
is a simple story teller ! To the reading of De Quin- 
cey he is a mighty spirit, of genius vast and compli- 
cate ; not a mere narrator of myths, journeyings, and 
traditions, but an imbodiment of all the knowledge 
and of the highest inspiration of his age — the Homer 
of Greek prose. This is to read with the re-creating 
force of synthetic thought ; but, reading with the sharp 
insight of analytic thought also, De Quincey elicits 
results equally original ; and, for illustration, we refer 
to some recondite ideas which his studies of Josephus 
have unfolded. But especially has De Quincey read 
with his imagination ; and thence it is that he has 
read poetry with such an enlightened spirit, with such 



THOMAS DE QXJINCEY. 343 

an understanding heart. Poetry, above all, cannot be 
read in the letter ; for the letter, of itself, will not 
yield the life in which poetry consists. That is reached 
only by one who has the experience of it in himself, 
who is moved by its power, and who has inward sight 
for the vision of its glory. To whom but such a one 
can Shakspeare, at least, be revealed ? It is not cold 
perception which can enter into communion with the 
dark and mystical soul of Hamlet; that can fathom 
the passions of doubt, the griefs of thought, the soli- 
tude of spirit that torture, waste, and kill him. It is 
not cold perception which can enter into the burning 
heart of Othello and conceive the intensity of that love 
which first stole into it with soft enchantment and then 
tore it in the convulsion of fierce despair. It is not 
cold perception which can explore the caverns of Mac- 
beth' s mind and trace in them the dim shapes of fate. 
It is not cold perception which can look into the guilty 
bosom of his wife and behold " that foul and perilous 
stuff which weighs upon the heart " and crushes out 
its life. It is not cold perception which can open to 
you the wily intellect of Richard or give you the sense 
of his villanies and his courage. It is not cold percep- 
tion which can comprehend the desolateness of Lear : 
not to that, as he sits upon the ground, can the be- 
reaved old man " tell strange stories of the deaths of 
kings " or still stranger stories of their daughters. 
It is not cold perception which takes cognizance of 
Titania, Puck, Ariel, Caliban, Miranda, Prospero. 
No ; imagination it is to which these reveal them- 
selves ; it is by that faculty that words upon the print- 
ed page quicken into life, brighten into splendor, or 



344 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS, 

gather into shadows of terror or of power. As the 
letter of a book cannot give the spirit of these things, 
the mechanism of a theatre cannot give their scenery. 
It is imagination which must also do this ; and baize, 
and canvas, and paint, and gaslight rather hinder than 
help it. It is imagination with the volume in the 
closet which can give to Hamlet his true kingdom 
of the ideal Denmark ; which can place the dusky 
Moor impressively in the halls of his olden castle amidst 
the visions of his jealousy; which can dwell vnth 
Macbeth behind his frowning battlements or follow 
him to midnight heaths — see the blaze of weird fires 
on the faces of unearthly hags and against the black 
vault of the sepulchral sky ; which can set Richard be- 
fore us amidst all that is genuinely terrible, whether 
we see him in the secret retreats of meditation, in the 
pomp of open council, in the horrors of his dreams, or 
in bloody struggle in the crush of armies on the field 
of death ; which can build adequately over Lear the 
murky and cheerless heavens, and spread beneath him 
the homeless wild, and listen to the tempest as it beats 
upon him with its " pitiless storm ; '' which again can 
turn from this and it is gone. Then open the book 
elsewhere, and in a moment it can lighten up the azure 
dome with stars, cover the ground with flowers, fill the 
air with summer, throng glen and grove with merry 
elves and charmed men, make glad the night with fairy 
revels, steep it in the mystery of beauty, and wrap 
fancy in the dream which Shakspeare dreamed. Thus 
we conceive imagination reads ; and, when it has such 
scope as the reading De Quincey gives, grand indeed 
must be the life in which it lives, glorious beyond ex- 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 345 

pression the universe of ideas and emotions in which 
it revels. We have here but indicated the spirit in 
which De Quincey reads rather than the extent and 
variety of his scholarship. We have no adequate au- 
thority to criticize his erudition ; but the living spirit 
with which he has studied, those of most moderate cul- 
ture can appreciate and enjoy. To go through books 
is not to read them. Men may masticate thousands of 
volumes, but not convert them into nourishment : af- 
ter devouring hecatombs of folios, they may have minds 
as lanky as before ; or if, with acquisitive memory, 
their minds increase in bulk, the bulk is that of obesi- 
ty, and not of muscle. But men may read wisely and 
read well, yet not to the issue to which De Quincey 
has read. It would be possible, no doubt, to equal De 
Quincey in the number and worth of the books he has 
studied ; but to read as De Quincey has read would 
require as much genius as to write as De Quincey has 
written. 

And this brings us to the consideration of De Quin- 
cey as a writer ; but is it not as a writer we have been 
considering him through our long paper ? True, inas- 
much as it is only through his writing that we know 
him. We have ventured, however, to conceive our- 
selves to be, relatively to our examination, as behind 
his works, and from that point of vision to look through 
them. We now change our position, and for a short 
time direct our thoughts to that function of expres- 
sion whereby we have knowledge of De Quincey's mind 
and are put into communion with it. We say, then, 
in the first place, that De Quincey gives us his mean- 
ing. To do this being the purpose of the most ordi- 



346 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

nary utterance, it may seem an impertinence to mention 
it as a distinction of good writing ; yet it is no im- 
pertinence so to mark it ; for, although to give one's 
meaning be the first condition of any writing, it is only 
in the best that we find it in perfection. In composi- 
tion, as in every art, he alone performs well its simple 
functions who has also mastered its difficulties. Cur- 
ran said of an advocate who dealt largely in senti- 
mental and pathetic bombast, " It will never do for a 
man to turn painter merely on the strength of having 
a pot of colors by him, unless he knows how to lay 
them on." To the unskilled in composition, the vo- 
cabulary is of as little use as the pot of colors is to 
the unskilled in painting ; and as the dauber could no 
more paint the chair in Raphael's picture than he could 
the heavenly grace of the Madonna's countenance, the 
scribbler could no more relate an anecdote, or apply it 
as De Quincey does, than he could Avrite the most 
brilliant of his essays. The sufficiency of thoroughly 
disciplined power is his in every thing, in the common 
as in the rare : obvious thought is not darkened by 
obscurity of expression ; and profound thought is made 
as clear as language can make it. Ideas are presented 
distinctly, each in its own singleness, each also in its 
relations ; and, ^vithout any show of system, the au- 
thor communicates them to our minds with the order 
and gradation which they have in his mind ; and while 
thus imparting his meaning, unmistakably and in its 
fulness, in the mere process of giving it he excites the 
faculties of the reader ; he enlivens them ; he gives 
them pleasure ; and thus there is inducement to peruse 
his writings, not for his meaning alone, but also for the 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 347 

interest and the enjoyment which are experienced in 
obtaining it. Writers whose matter is of signal value 
sometimes fail in all these requisites. Their meaning 
is doubtful by clumsiness of expression or difficult by 
complexity of method ; and thus it is either lost or it is 
misunderstood. The few who have knowledge of its val- 
ue, who are aware that success will give ample compensa- 
tion for fatigue, may persevere and conquer ; but num- 
bers will be repelled at the outset, and many will not 
even begin the search. If they should have nothing in 
manner which obscures meaning, they often have an in- 
ertness that deadens it ; the latent force that slumbers 
in it is not awakened, and it fails to arouse the intellects 
with which it is brought into contact. Every loss to 
the subject in such case is a loss to souls — a loss to 
them of the truth which they might have learned and 
of the energy to which they might have been aroused. 
De Quincey is unlike such authors in that he gives his 
meaning ; he is like them in that his meaning is worth 
giving. We need not here enter into particulars, since 
all we have written includes this position and aims to 
unfold our consciousness of it ; and now, so near the 
end of our article, knowing the depth of this conscious- 
ness, we feel how inadequate has been our exposition. 
When we look upon the seventeen volumes of De Quin- 
cey which are before us while we write ; when we think 
on the wealth of power and of life, of wisdom, truth, 
and beauty which is in them ; when we think on the 
wonderful experience which they contain — of the 
humor, always on the margin of immensity, bril- 
liant, indeed, on one side, but on the other losing its 
brightness in the shadows of the infinite ; of the sub- 



348 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

lime ideas which meditation, that broods upon eternity, 
generates — ideas which fill the condition of man with 
awful fears as well as mighty hopes, but that glorify 
while they sadden it ; of inarticulate musings, that are 
liturgies of worship in the inner sanctuary of the spirit, 
that with every opening day are the matins of a new 
creation, and with every falling night are the vespers 
of returning darkness — the daily sacrament of mys- 
tery ; when we recall the amount of interest and de- 
light which we owe to them, the number of profound 
and pleasurable hours with which they have enriched 
us, the sense of inward dignity with which they have 
inspired us in melancholy that is better than joy, and 
in exercise of thought more stimulating than a feast, — 
when we think of all this, and contrast it with our ef- 
fort to make our impressions known, we despond over 
the result, and are almost more inclined to burn our 
essay than to print it. And yet the feelings which 
lead to this confession say more, we think, for that liv- 
ing power of meaning with which De Quincey's writ- 
ings are imbued than any specification of detail, though 
done with the utmost accuracy of philosophical analy- 
sis. Such feelings show the spirituality of their import 
and the spirituality of their influence. Quivering with 
emotion as in many parts they are, there is nothing in 
them of maudlin sentiment ; alive with all charitable 
pity and wisehearted benevolence, there is no manner- 
ism in them of a narrow purpose and no heat of an ill- 
tempered zeal. Much learning is in them ; but they 
are not mad, neither are they pedantic or abstruse, but 
infused with a soul of liberal humanit)', which is gra- 
cious to the living while it venerates the dead. They 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 349 

court not the esoteric approbation of a fastidious co- 
terie, and they are as far from craving after vulgar 
popularity ; but in the whole breadth of the intellect- 
ual nature they meet in every direction the thoughtful 
mind ; in all varieties of emotion they respond to the 
impassioned heart ; they appeal to our noble instincts ; 
they address our higher faculties ; and so they elevate 
us, by dravring us up from the mean regions of sense 
into the free spaces of grand ideas, of unworldly ex- 
citements, of affecting and beautiful imaginings. It is 
no wonder, therefore, that the meaning of De Quin- 
cey should go forth into a glorious style, if, for 
the sake of convenience, we distinguish style as sep- 
arate from meaning. Even as only thus considered it 
is extraordinary, and has in itself the evidence of genius. 
It comes out of a deep spirit and is instinct with the 
force of life. It is easy ; it consists, so far as words 
are concerned, of fine, natural, impressive mother Eng- 
lish ; and the mind, while taking in its purport, im- 
bibes a warmth which homeborn speech, enlivened with 
thought, always imparts. The expression does, indeed, 
take the dimensions or the impulse of the idea or the 
sentiment, but the tongue is never strange ; the import 
may be novel, but the voice is always native. Though 
De Quincey so often deals with topics away from Eng- 
lish civilization and literature, he has a singular facility 
of fusing his most learned speculations into the idiom 
of English thinking, even into the idiom of its drollery 
and its slang. His style is frequently involved, and 
yet it is never intricate ; for, however phrase may roll 
within phrase, the thread of the meaning never be- 
comes knotty or entangled. So, too, his style is fluent ; 



350 ILLtJSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

not with the weakness and looseness of shallow water, 
but with the condensed brilliancy of the stream, with 
the grand sweep of the torrent, or with the undula- 
tions of the sea. It is gentle without losing manliness ; 
it is sweet without being dainty ; it is luminous, but it 
does not glare; and, without being florid, it is rich 
with imagery. The style of De Quincey is admirably 
flexible ; it modulates with the modulations of his 
mind ; and its transitions are as smooth as the changes 
of a tune. It is no less flexible in its adaptation to 
every variety in the matter : in philosophy it is sub- 
tile ; in argument close ; in description vivid ; in emo- 
tion it answers as truly to the feeling as respiration 
to the beatings of the heart ; in all it is progressive, 
and advances with increase of energy as the subject ad- 
vances with increase of interest. It is most individ- 
ually marked ; it has a most decisive mannerism ; it 
cannot be mistaken ; and yet within itself, and limited 
by its own laws, it has such abundance of diversity 
that it never wearies and is never monotonous. As 
impassioned prose, especially, it is excellent': it is at 
no time deformed with the- measure or the rhythm 
which is proper to verse, but it has a true measure and 
rhythm of its own : lyrical often as the finest verse, it 
still remains free as the simplest prose : and this is a 
great charm of it, that it combines the ethereal ideal- 
ism of poetry with tho burning actuality of eloquence. 
This is a rare combination ; for it is hard to find the 
elements of poetry and of eloquence so intermingled 
that one does not spoil the other — that the eloquence 
does not turn poetry into rhetoric, or poetry change 
eloquence to bombast ; but, in the impassioned prose 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 351 

of De Quincey, the two are so happily blended that 
both form a unity of beauty and of power. Many 
analogies crowd upon the mind in thinking of De Quin- 
cey's style. If we associate it with analogies to the 
ear, we think of i£ in connection with rich harmonies 
of music. A passage of De Quincey often resembles 
a movement in a great symphony. Starting from a 
single note of thought, the passage, as it goes on, is 
gradually complicated, the harmony swells and deepens 
in each advance, until with cumulation and revolution 
of musically rolling phrases and sentences the mind as 
well as the ear is filled, and the effect is as when all 
the instruments at the close of an orchestral piece of 
Mozarts melt into unity the several agencies of their 
power. If we associate De Quincey's style with analo- 
gies to the eye, we think of it in connection with grand 
and solemn sights. We might think of it in connec- 
tion with the appearances of the atmosphere at the 
close of a summer's day amidst the mountains, the for- 
ests, and the lakes of New England. There is splendor 
in the heavens and glory on the earth ; but there is that 
with them which sobers 'the spirit into thought. The 
sun resting on the hills floods the prospect, but it is not 
with dry and crystal beams ; it is with a light colored 
with all the gorgeous hues which the sky, the waters, 
and the woods can lend it : but Night is already draw- 
ing her dark girdle around the whole, and the soul 
plunges beyond it into the fathomless unknown. It is 
thus, too, that the style of De Quincey has ever a shad- 
ow near its brilliancy. If we should think of it in 
connection with analogies to both ear and eye, we 
would seek for them in architecture ; we should find 



352 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

them in the interior of a cathedral — in its spacious 
aisles, its stately columns, its pointed and interlacing 
arches, its pictured walls, its painted windows, its illu- 
minated altars, its vestured priests, its liturgies of pomp, 
its clouds of incense, and its tides of music. But some- 
times the analogy would be more true when its aisles 
were empty, its altars dark ; only the colored moon- 
light glimmering through its arches ; when a solitary 
worshipper knelt in the depth of its gloom and its hol- 
low spaces echoed to the sighings of his prayer. The 
first analogies figure to us the ritual grandeur which 
the style of De Quincey often assumes; the others 
suggest what still more properly belongs to it, and that 
is mystical sublimity. 

Furthermore, De Quincey is a great critic of life. 
His own experience has been singular ; and, so far as 
his singularity could add to knowledge, he has acutely 
examined and used it. But, to better purpose still, he 
has examined that nature which he has in common 
with all men. He has entered into its innermost re- 
cesses, and tested consciousness with most cunning 
questioning. He has not given us his discoveries with 
any regulated method; but we have the results of 
them in every thing that he has written. He has, as 
we have shown, gone into the deep places of thought, 
analyzed the qualities of action, traced the windings 
of passion, and scrutinized the source of motive. He 
has also traversed the outward ; and with sharp in- 
spection he has every where looked at the shows and 
substances of things, not perhaps always without pre- 
judice. He has estimated the value of types and sym- 
bols, discriminated the real from the seeming, the es- 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 353 

sential from the accidental, the permanent from the 
transient, and sought out with care the elements of a 
just philosophy ; and, if this philosophy is not rounded 
into any system of completeness, it stimulates each 
reader to seek out principles for himself, and for him- 
self to make their application. We do not accept all 
his positions or his criticisms. In our view, his writ- 
ings contain ethical and political errors ; but the er- 
rors are so few compared with the truths that we have 
not stopped to mark them ; and even his mistakes so 
often spring out of manliness, that, while we decry the 
mistakes, we sometimes sympathize with the earnest- 
ness of temper which commits them. But De Quin- 
cey is a great poet of life as well as a great critic. 
Sometimes he is a lyric poet ; and, though he uses 
not measure, his writing is no less a song. It is 
upon occasions a very sweet song, and comes in liquid 
melody flowing from the heart. It is dulcet with 
those memories which the soul will not let die and 
with those affections which are the religion and sanc- 
tity of human love. But most he is a tragic poet. 
Those deep-sounding rhythms of thought and passion 
that abound in his writings, and which surge so against 
the battlements of fact, have the forces which move 
them in the tragic elements of our nature ; and so, what- 
ever faculty the genius of De Quincey exercises, it soon 
rises into poetic elevation and connects itself more or 
less with suggestions of the tragic. In whatever, too, 
it has most of the poetic, it has also most of the 
tragic. When memory leads De Quincey to his youth 
of trouble, of illusion, and of pain, then, as there is 
poetry the most impressive, so there is misery the most 
23 



354 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

profound. Memory, recalling the story of his brother, 
gives us a drama saturated with grief, and not the less 
poignant because the pathos is unconscious. So it is 
with fancy : it is never, in De Quincey, so varied in its 
images, never so luxuriant in its analogies, as when it 
works from the inspiration of some latent sadness. It 
is the same with his intellect : it delights most to deal 
with questions which concern the philosophy of life, 
the mystery of death, the sorrows which have their 
fountains in the sources of immortality, the fears which 
are interwoven with the divines t affections and the 
holiest sentiments. Then even reasoning has the lyric 
tone and thought of poetry ; it moulds itself into 
Hamlet-like soliloquy; "the why,'' " the wherefore," 
of the struggling spirit's interrogatories are emphatic 
with mournful intensity ; speculation strains itself al- 
most to a cry — a cry of anguish in the inner man in 
his. yearnings after peace. And when all working to- 
gether in some profound and extraordinary combina- 
tion issue in a single and unique result, we have, as in 
the Household Wreck, a tragedy as complete as any 
for which human suffering affords materials. The tragic 
power of De Quincey does not lie in the conception of 
a plot, in the development of character, in the detail 
of action or incident ; for the invention and construct- 
iveness which give power of this kind De Quincey 
does not possess. His consists in reaching down to 
those elementary interests of our deeper nature which 
are not limited to the condition of fated individuals, 
but which enter into the condition of every man and 
into his condition as man. Though universal, they are 
yet the most dormant in our nature, and there are few 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 355 

that awaken tliem ; but when the voice of a living spirit 
stirs them they shake off their lethargy and answer to 
the call with most impassioned sympathy. And so it 
happens that the poetry and eloquence which excite 
such interests, when once they are apprehended, are 
the most affecting. There is a pathos in them deeper 
than tears ; and this is the pathos which the writings of 
De Quincey the most contain. 

Because De Quincey is thus a great critic and poet 
of life, he is also a critic and poet of literature. With 
living experience, with living imagination, he has 
schooled his consciousness in the discipline of Nature, 
which must be the matter of all that is excellent and 
immortal in literature. In humanity itself he has 
sought the significance for which letters must stand, 
so far as letters are true signs. It was not merely by 
books that De Quincey was fitted to judge of what 
books comprise ; no, but in that which is before books 
and above books — the soul, with its inexhaustible ca- 
pacities ; that which for all compositions contains the 
inward law, and which imposes on them their outward 
rules. De Quincey, therefore, has been a suggestive 
critic in philosophy, because he has lived much with his 
own consciousness ; a deep critic in history, because 
he has meditated much on the relations of man in com- 
munity ; a glowing critic in art, in all its impassioned 
and imaginative manifestations, whether by the medi- 
um of language or other medium, because he has 
trained his sensibilities in primal communion with the 
universe and with man. And finally, because there 
was native music in his own soul, all his reading, all 
his erudition, all his knowledge became musical in 



356 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

their use. Brought under the prevailing inspiration, 
even criticism grew into harmony ; and, in mere com- 
mentaries upon letters, the enthusiasm of the commen- 
tator uplifted him to the grandeur of a poet. 

We cannot close our remarks on the genius of De 
Quincey without saying a few words on its relations 
to religion and the religious life. 

Every pure mind, having that sort of power which 
we call by the name of genius, in all its higher action, 
implies the religious function. It cannot but be so, 
since this higher action is always struggling, reaching, 
after the ultimate or the perfect ; and, ever and ever, 
the struggle and the reaching end in mystery. If the 
primal workings of the mind could exclude all besides 
which enters into our idea of religion, it cannot exclude 
mystery. However unconscious, indifferent, or opposed 
as to what pious men deem real concerning the infinite, 
the invisible, and the eternal, no mind of strong faculties, 
moved by ardor for the true, or the beautiful, or the ex- 
cellent, or the grand, but must feel in every profounder 
consciousness the mystery that is within it and the mys- 
tery that unfolds it. Take the action of a powerful 
mind dealing with the most naked ideas of mathemati- 
cal relation. It loses itself in the calculus, deals with 
the remotest mathematics, rises to the most abstract 
results, in which pure thought seems to dissever rea- 
soning from time, space, change, and matter. Yet, 
how perfectly soever the most transcendent problems 
may be resolved, however determinate may be the re- 
sult, they are all within an infinitely including prob- 
lem, of which the unknown X — the mystery of Being 
— meets them on every side, and defies analysis. Take 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 357 

the action of a powerful mind dealing with matter in 
its masses. It discovers their positions, motions, or- 
der, distances, appearances, measurements, weight, and 
forces. It traces their paths, it notes their places, and, 
with an accuracy which excites delight and wonder, un- 
folds the universal laws of bodies and their mechan- 
ism. But the action of mind stops not with matter in 
the integrity of separate masses. It penetrates their 
interior constitution ; it looks into their secret pro- 
cesses ; it applies its geologies to the strata of the 
bulky mountains ; it applies its chemistries to the ar- 
rangement and operations of invisible particles ; and 
here the unknown X again appears, the mystery that 
evades solution. If design and purpose be admitted, it 
is the mystery of creation ; if they are doubted or de- 
nied, the mystery is not less in being simply the mys- 
tery of existence. Take, further, the action of a pow- 
erful mind dealing with organized and vitalized forms ; 
then upward through all the grades of vegetable and 
animal development, from the blade of grass to the 
kingly tree, from the insect's egg that slumbers in the 
mud to the lion that rules the forest or the eagle that 
overtops the cloud, there is universe above universe, 
there is universe within universe ; and ample as the re- 
gions are which observation has traversed, harmonious 
as the order is which science has evolved, all that in- 
tellect discovers or understands is but a point encom- 
passed by immensity ; and mystery is in the point 
itself, as well as in the immensity that surrounds it — 
the mystery of life. Superadd to these the element 
of distinct consciousness, that separates itself from all 
and that is cognizant of itself; the subjective entity, 



358 ILLUSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

without which matter were as nothing, without which 
being would be blank, and creation objectless, and life 
a wilderness of blind sensation ; without which no 
glory would be called from above the sun, no wisdom 
evoked from beneath the earth, and no gratitude sent 
up in articulated anthems from the heart of life. But 
this very consciousness is the crowning mystery — the 
mystery of spirit. Man is not only thus imbosomed 
in mystery, but has the deepest of mysteries in his ca- 
pacity to apprehend mystery. Man is not only im- 
bosomed in mystery, but is in himself the sum of all 
mysteries. That he is at all, involves the mystery of 
being ; that he is so fearfully and wonderfully formed, 
involves the mystery of creation ; that he breathes and 
feels, involves the mystery of life ; and that he reasons 
and believes, involves the mystery of spirit. From 
this element of religion, then, no mind of energy can 
escape ; it is impressed on it within and from without ; 
it meets it in every direction ; in the whole circle of 
human thought and human knowledge it is the centre 
and the circumference. 

It would be strange if a mind so contemplative and 
so vigilant as De Quincey's, so large in its discourse 
yet so acute in its perceptions, did not feel with inten- 
sity this all-pervading and universal mystery, and, 
through the sense of mystery, apprehend the sacred 
relations of man's nature to time, to eternity, and to 
God — the sacred relations that constitute religion. 
No genius of modern literature shows so much of this 
feeling as does that of De Quincey. It is his by con- 
stitution, and by culture it is his also. He is much of 
a thinker on the metaphysics of things, and he feels 



THOMAS DE QITINCEY. 359 

the mystery of being ; he is much of an inquirer into 
the constitution of things, and he feels the mystery of 
creation; he is much of a muser on this full world, 
this vital worlds throbbing in every speck of it with a 
quickened pulse, and he feels the mystery of life ; he 
is instinct and " all compact '' himself with the con- 
sciousness of soul, and he feels the mystery of spirit. 
But, by its element of mystery, religion has relation to 
man only in his reason ; and this faculty, primarily, is 
neither emotional nor impulsive. Religion has a more 
living relation to man in other of his faculties. Man 
is a being of desire, and the subject of happiness and 
misery; man is a being of affection, and the subject 
of love and hatred ; man is a being of conscience, and 
the subject of right and wrong, of the sense of rectitude 
and of the sense of guilt. Into all of these religion 
enters, and carries with it the inspiration of its own 
potency and infinitude. The writings of De Quincey 
are interfused with this emotional energy of the religious 
nature not less than with its intellectual searchings 
and aspirations ; for De Quincey, besides being a man 
most thoughtful, is also a man most craving in high 
desires, most anxious in solemn interests ; a man in- 
deed most thoughtful, but also most sensitive, most 
impassioned. He is a man that, if he has not sought 
to act, has at least sought to know, and to feel, and to 
aspire in all the profounder and grander directions of 
humanity. He is also a man who most poignantly 
understands wherein he has fallen short, and who* in 
his best attainments finds rebuke, not from the bright 
perfection alone, from which the holiest are infinitely 
remote, but by the consciousness of what he might have 



360 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENIUS. 

accomplislied and has left undone. We do not in his 
works read these things in obtruded humility or in 
volunteered deprecation, for no man more than De 
Quincey abhors the cant of sentiment ; and, though 
he has made the sincerest of confessions, he has never 
in making them forgotten the reverence which he owed 
to his own soul, nor allowed others to forget it. It is 
in the deep spirit of the inward thought which is not 
in the word, but under it, which is not in the expres- 
sion, but which pants behind it, that we feel the Avork- 
ing of a religious mind in all that De Quincey writes ; 
and, to a mind such as his, no merely abstruse or ab- 
stract religionism would be sufficient. Religion to 
him must be tangible in its application to his person- 
ality. The mysterious and the invisible are within it ; 
but he in his limitations must find something by which 
he can make it his. That which is so hidden in abys- 
mal obscurities that no thought can reach it, that which 
is so merged in immensity that no feeling can grasp it, 
will not meet the need of his understanding nor the 
yearning of his heart. It must be a revelation as well 
as a mystery ; it must be an incarnation as well as a 
spirituality : and so we find that De Quincey is dis- 
tinctly and avowedly a Christian. This is what we 
should expect from his genius and his experience. 
With much of the analyst, he has yet more of the 
poet. He seeks for the reason and the origin of things ; 
but, more than this, he dwells upon their forms and he 
lives in their life. The sympathies, therefore, of his 
genius direct him to look in religion for the imbodi- 
ment of power and of love as they are made manifest 
in Christ and Christianity. The tendencies of his 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 361 

experience lead him in the same direction. We presume 
no further on this experience, and indeed we know no 
further, than what his public writings tell ; but in these 
WTi tings we discern many wanderings amidst the shad- 
ows and the shapings of the mind, and an awaking as 
out of visions, that needed the guidance of a calm and 
steady light. We discern in them the sighings of a 
troubled heart, that sojourned long in the wilderness 
of lonely musings and that could find rest only in the 
shelter of secure conviction ; we discern in them much 
that is sensitive and tender ; much that is pitiful and 
awake to all the voices of benign humanity ; much 
that shows of buife tings with the stormy waves of 
grief, temptation, and affliction; much that reveals, 
without intending it, the secrets of the dark prison 
house of suffering ; much that speaks of most impas- 
sioned capacity turned into disappointment, and for 
whose aspiration immortality alone is the true answer ; 
and, as we should infer, the author is a Christian. 
Christianity is that concrete power of religion which 
can act on such a man in the completeness of his be- 
ing; and, after all, this man's need is that of every 
man, to which Christianity is the gracious ministry — 
the ministry of faith to doubt, the ministry of peace 
to trouble, the ministry of mercy to the sense of guilt, 
the ministry of comfort to sorrow, and of the perfect 
future to the imperfect present. We can see in the 
writings of De Quincey that the workings of his mind 
and the course of his experience have led him into an 
ardent sympathy with such a ministry, and that he 
could no more put the religion of his deeply-excited 
soul into a colorless philosophy than he could adjust 



362 ILLirSTKATIONS OF GENIUS. 

his myriadly-inspired memories to tlie bald conditions 
of a system of mnemonics. We can see in his writ- 
ings that he cordially accepts Christianity ; that he ac- 
cepts it as a truth, as a sentiment, as a life, and as an 
institution. We feel in the eloquent outpouring of 
his genius the longings after the true, the good, the 
pure, the infinite, the everlasting, which the word of 
Christ encourages and inspires, and an affinity with 
the large affections which the sublime charities of 
Christ's life and death illustrate. 



71 6 







^A V^' 



,00^ 




. - /^^v 






%,^^'' .\C\ 













.^^' -'^ 



s^ ,'\ 






' "^Xvir^ 



^,^' *#Ma^ -^.^^i^ 



-ti'-^i ' t/* i-^ 



■N 



,-> 










^^ ^^ 









A ^ X i fi ^^,. ^ ^ X 




.%^^ 



^^ 



■^00'' 






«^' 



^■^ %. 










o 0^ 



^:^ 



^, ..-^^ 









c. .'^■w- 



n i \ 










o 









" 4 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



11. 

O'OM 514 505 5, 






' •. • . V;; J: 






